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MUNERA PULVERIS 



MUNERA PULVERIS 



SIX ESSAYS 



ON THE ELEMENTS OF 



POLITICAL ECONOMY 



JOHN RUSKIN, 

HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRISTCHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW 
OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES ELIOl NORTON 



BRA'N'i?'.VOOD EDITION 



CHARLES E. ^lERRTLL & CO.. NEW YORK 

GEORGE ALLEN, LONDON AND ORPINGTON 

i8qi 



S2 13 S 



Copyrtght 1891 
Charles E. Merrill & Co^ 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 
PREFACE . 

CHAP. 

I. DEFINITIONS 
II. STORE-KEEPING 

III. COIN-KEEPING 

IV. COMMERCE 
V. GOVERNMENT 

VI, MASTERSHIP 



PAGE 

vii 



27 

76 

no 

129 

173 



APPENDICES 



207 



INTRODUCTION. 



'' I ^HE first sentence of this volume is a 
-*■ gage of battle : — " The following pages 
contain, I believe, the first accurate analysis 
of the laws of Political Economy which has 
been published in England." 

It would have been easy to avoid giving 
offence, had Mr. Ruskin simply stated that 
he regarded the popular conception and the 
accepted definition and expositions of Political 
Economy as erroneous ; and that he proposed 
to treat the subject, not as an independent 
science, of which the conclusions, or so-called 
laws, are deduced from certain assumed pre- 
mises, and form a body of conditional truths ; 
but as a system of conduct and legislation 
dependent upon conditions of moral culture, 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

and requisite to the maintenance of the 
healthy and happy Hfe of a State or Com- 
munity. It would then have been obvious 
that his object, and also, in large part, his 
subject, were different from those of Adam 
Smith, Ricardo, Mill, and other teachers of 
what in modern times has been called Political 
Economy. 

But such a statement was not in accord 
with his temper or his studies. He was an 
idealist, more familiar with the Republic and 
the Laws of Plato, and with the Politics of 
Aristotle, than with the writings of those 
whom he terms " the vulgar political econo- 
mists." Their work was mainly to determine 
what, under specified conditions, actually is; 
while his aim was rather to assert what ought 
to be. Their work did not serve as a guide 
of conduct, either individual or national. It 
failed to recognize and enforce the higher 
objects of existence, and was occupied chiefly, 
if not exclusively, with the mere material 
conditions on which the accumulation and 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

distribution of wealth depend. Their very 
definitions of wealth appeared to him wrong, 
because of their disregard of the essential 
properties of things. They held wealth to 
consist of "all useful or agreeable things which 
possess exchangeable value." He held it " to 
consist in things in themselves or essentially 
valuable," without regard to the possibility of 
exchange.* 

The conclusions to be deduced from these 
definitions are widely diverse. 

There is much that is interesting and instruc- 
tive in Mr. Ruskin's treatment of economical 
problems. Inspired by a generous spirit, and 
insisting upon the application of the test of 
right and wrong to these questions, his work 

* In the Preface of 187 1 to this volume Mr. Ruskin 
does injustice to Mr. Mill in stating that he had not 
even given a definition of wealth, but had contented 
himself with saying that "every one has a notion, 
sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is 
meant by wealth." He had overlooked the fact that, 
a few pages further on, Mr. Mill gave the definition 
which I have cited above. 

b 



X INTRODUCTION. 

becomes largely a study of ideal conditions — 
the political economy, as it were, of a New 
Atlantis ; a body of speculations, under 
modern guise, of the same order as those 
of the Republic or the Laws. The presenta- 
tion by a man of genius of his ideal schemes 
of polity serves a good purpose. For even if 
those schemes do not admit of direct or 
immediate application, they tend to prevent 
a dull acceptance of the conditions of our 
actual civilization as if they were final, or as 
good as they might be even under existing 
circumstances. The suggestion of remedies, 
though they be impracticable, leads to closer 
investigation of the evils which require treat- 
ment, and of the means for their diminution 
or removal. 

" If the reader," said Mr. Ruskin, in the 
Preface to " A Joy For Ever," " should feel 
inclined to blame me for too sanguine a 
statement of future possibilities in political 
practice, let him consider how absurd it would 
have appeared in the days of Edward L, if 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

the present state of social economy had been 
then predicted as necessary, or were described 
as possible. And I believe the advance from 
the days of Edward I. to our own, great as it 
is confessedly, consists not so much in what 
we have actually accomplished, as in what we 
are now enabled to conceive." 

But between 1857, when these sentences 
were written, and 1862, when Munera Pul- 
veris was first published in Eraser's Maga- 
zine, Mr. Ruskin had grown more impatient. 
However highminded a prophet may be, he 
does not like to have his words pass un- 
heeded, or his warnings listened to only to be 
disregarded. Though Mr. Ruskin's voice 
professed to be that of a political economist, 
it was a voice full of emotion. His most 
sympathetic readers may regret the seeming 
arrogance of his speech and the absoluteness 
of his self-assurance, but he hardly need ask 
for pardon if his words sometimes exhibit the 
heart within him fierce and hot with indigna- 
tion at the sight of hopeless misery on the 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

one hand, and of selfish waste and luxury on 
the other ; both alike fostered, as he believed, 
by the false teachings of the prevailing 
political economy. The prophet of righteous- 
ness and of judgment to come does not 
conform his tone and his expression to those 
of the abstract philosopher. 

Mr. Ruskin's humour, however, was not at 
this time altogether grim. Toward the end 
of 1857 he wrote to me: — "It must be a 
grand thing to be in a country that one has 
good hope of, and which is improving ; 
instead of, as I am, in the position of the 
wicked man in one of the old paraphrases 
my mother used to teach me : 

" ' Fixed on his house he leans ; — his house 
And all its props decay : 
He holds it fast, but while he holds, 
The tottering frame gives way.' 

And yet I shouldn't say that, neither, for in 
all I am doing, or trying to do, I assume the 
infancy of my country, and look forward to a 
state of things which everybody mocks at as 



INTRODUCTION. xiii 

ridiculous and impossible, and which holds 
the same relation to our present condition 
that the said condition does to Aboriginal 
Briton-ship. . . . Truly, however, it does look 
like a sunset in the east to-day." 

Three years later, in i860, he wrote: — 
"When I begin to think at all, I get into 
states of disgust and fury at the way the mob 
is going on (meaning by mob chiefly Dukes, 
Crown-Princes, and such-like persons), that I 
choke, and have to go to the British Museum 
to look at Penguins, till I get cool." 

Again, in the next year, he said : — " I sup- 
pose, on the whole, as little has been got into 
me and out of me as under any circumstances 
was probable. Had my father made me his 
clerk, I might now have been in a fair way of 
becoming a respectable Political Economist, in 
the manner of Ricardo or Mill,— but, granting 
liberty and power of travelling and working 
as I chose, I suppose everything I've chosen 
to have been about as wrong as wrong 
could be." 



Xiv INTRODUCTION. 

Munera Pulveris is neither the essay of 
" a respectable Political Economist," nor " as 
wrong as wrong could be." 

C. E. N. 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
1891. 



PREFACE. 



The following pages contain, I believe, the 
first accurate analysis of the laws of Politi- 
cal Economy which has been pubHshed in 
England. Many treatises, within their scope, 
correct, have appeared in contradiction of the 
views popularly received ; but no exhaustive 
examination of the subject was possible to any 
person unacquainted with the value of the 
products of the highest industries, commonly 
called the " Fine Arts ; " and no one acquainted 
with the nature of those industries has, so far 
as I know, attempted, or even approached, the 
task. 

So that, to the date (1863) when these 
Essays were published, not only the chief 
conditions of the production of wealth had 
remained unstated, but the nature of wealth 
itself had never been defined. ^* Every one 



XVI PREFACE. 



has a notion, sufficiently correct for common 
purposes, of what is meant by wealth," wrote 
Mr. Mill, in the outset of his treatise ; and 
contentedly proceeded, as if a chemist should 
proceed to investigate the laws of chemistry 
without endeavouring to ascertain the nature 
of fire or water, because every one had a no- 
tion of them, ^' sufficiently correct for common 
purposes." 

But even that apparently indisputable state- 
ment was untrue. There is not one person in 
ten thousand who has a notion sufficiently 
correct, even for the commonest purposes, of 
'^what is meant" by wealth ; still less of what 
wealth everlastingly is, whether we mean it or 
not ; which it is the business of every student 
of economy to ascertain. We, indeed, know 
(either by experience or in imagination) what it 
is to be able to provide ourselves with luxu- 
rious food, and handsome clothes ; and if Mr. 
Mill had thought that wealth consisted only in 
these, or in the means of obtaining these, it 
would have been easy for him to have so de- 
fined it with perfect scientific accuracy. But 
he knew better : he knew that some kinds of 
wealth consisted in the possession, or power 



PREFACE. XVU 

of obtaining, other things than these ; but, 
having, in the studies of his Hfe, no clue to the 
principles of essential value, he was compelled 
to take public opinion as the ground of his 
science; and the public, of course, willingly 
accepted the notion of a science founded on 
their opinions. 

I had, on the contrary, a singular advantage, 
not only in the greater extent of the field 
of investigation opened to me by my daily 
pursuits, but in the severity of some lessons 
I accidentally received in the course of 
them. 

When, in the winter of 185 1, I was collect- 
ing materials for my work on Venetian archi- 
tecture, three of the pictures of Tintoret on the 
roof of the School of St. Roch were hanging 
down in ragged fragments, mixed with lath 
and plaster, round the apertures made by the 
fall of three Austrian heavy shot. The city of 
Venice was not, it appeared, rich enough to 
repair the damage that winter ; and buckets 
were set on the floor of the upper room of the 
school to catch the rain, which not only fell 
directly through the shot holes, but found its 
way, owing to the generally pervious state of 



XVlll PREFACE. 

the roof, through many of the canvases of 
Tintoret in other parts of the ceihng. 

It was a lesson to me, as I have just said, 
no less direct than severe ; for I knew already 
at that time (though I have not ventured to 
assert, until recently at Oxford,) that the 
pictures of Tintoret in Venice were accurately 
the most precious articles of wealth in Europe, 
being the best existing productions of human 
industry. Now at the time that three of them 
were thus fluttering in moist rags from the 
roof they had adorned, the shops of the 
Rue Rivoli at Paris were, in obedience to a 
steadily-increasing public Demand, beginning 
to show a steadily-increasing Supply of elabo- 
rately finished and coloured lithographs, re- 
presenting the modern dances of delight, 
am.ong which the cancan has since taken a 
distinguished place. 

The labour employed on the stone of one 
of these lithographs is very much more than 
Tintoret was in the habit of giving to a picture 
of average size. Considering labour as the 
origin of value, therefore, the stone so highly 
wrought would be of greater value than the 
picture ; and since also it is capable of 



PREFACE. XIX 

producing a large number of immediately sale- 
able or exchangeable impressions, for which 
the ^'demand" is constant, the city of Paris 
naturally supposed itself, and on all hitherto 
believed or stated principles of political econ- 
omy, was, infinitely richer in the possession 
of a large number of these lithographic stones, 
(not to speak of countless oil pictures and 
marble carvings of similar character), than 
Venice in the possession of those rags of mil- 
dewed canvas, flaunting in the south wind and 
its salt rain. And, accordingly, Paris provided 
(without thought of the expense) lofty arcades 
of shops, and rich recesses of innumerable 
private apartments, for the protection of these 
better treasures of hers from the weather. 

Yet, all the while, Paris was not the richer 
for these possessions. Intrinsically, the de- 
lightful lithographs were not wealth, but polar 
contraries of wealth. She was, by the exact 
quantity of labour she had given to produce 
these, sunk below, instead of above, absolute 
Poverty. They not only were false Riches — 
they were true Debt which had to be paid at 
last — and the present aspect of the Rue Rivoli 
shows in what manner. 



XX PREFACE. 

And the faded stains of the Venetian ceiHng, 
all the while, were absolute and inestimable 
wealth. Useless to their possessors as for- 
gotten treasure in a buried city, they had in 
them, nevertheless, the intrinsic and eternal 
nature of wealth ; and Venice, still possessing 
the ruins of them, was a rich city ; only, the 
Venetians had not a notion sufficiently correct 
even for the very common purpose of inducing 
them to put slates on a roof, of what was 
"meant by wealth." i 

The vulgar economist would reply that his 
science had nothing to do with the qualities 
of pictures, but with their exchange-value 
only; and that hi^ business was, exclusively, 
to consider whether the remains of Tintoret 
were worth as many ten-and-sixpences as 
the impressions which might be taken from 
the lithographic stones. 

But he would not venture, without reserve, 
to make such an answer, if the example be 
taken in horses, instead of pictures. The most 
dull economist would perceive, and admit, that 
a gentleman who had a fine stud of horses 
was absolutely richer than one who had only 
ill-bred and broken-winded ones. He would 



PREFACE. XXI 



instinctively feel, though his pseudo-science 
had never taught him, that the price paid for 
the animals, in either case, did not alter the! 
fact of their worth: that the good horse, 
though it might have been bought by chance 
for a few guineas, was not therefore less valu- 
able, nor the owner of the galled jade any 
the richer, because he had given a hundred 
for it. 

So that the economist, in saying that his 
science takes no account of the quaHties of 
pictures, merely signifies that he cannot con- 
ceive of any quality of essential badness or 
goodness existing in pictures ; and that he is 
incapable of investigating the laws of wealth 
in such articles. Which is the fact. But, 
being incapable of defining intrinsic value in 
pictures, it follows that he must be equally 
helpless to define the nature of intrinsic value 
in painted glass, or in painted pottery, or in 
patterned stuffs, or in any other national pro- 
duce requiring true human ingenuity. Nay, 
though capable of conceiving the idea of intrin- 
sic value with respect to beasts of burden, 
no economist has endeavoured to state the 
general principles of National Economy, even 



XXll PREFACE. 

with regard to the horse or the ass. And, in 
fine, the modern political economists have been^ 
without exception^ incapable of apprehending the 
nature of intrinsic value at all. 

And the first specialty of the following 
treatise consists in its giving at the outset, 
and maintaining as the foundation of all sub- 
sequent reasoning, a definition of Intrinsic 
Value, and Intrinsic Contrary-of- Value ; the 
negative power having been left by former 
writers entirely out of account, and the posi- 
tive power left entirely undefined. 

But, secondly : the modern economist, ignor- 
ing intrinsic value, and accepting the popular 
estimate of things as the only ground of his 
science, has imagined himself to have ascer- 
tained the constant laws regulating the relation 
of this popular demand to its supply ; or, 
at least, to have proved that demand and 
supply were connected by heavenly balance, 
over which human foresight had no power. I 
chanced, by singular coincidence, lately to see 
this theory of the law of demand and supply 
brought to as sharp practical issue in another 
great siege, as I had seen the theories of in- 
trinsic value brought, in the siege of Venice. 



PREFACE. XXlll 

I had the honour of being on the committee 
under the presidentship of the Lord Mayor 
of London, for the victualling of Paris after 
her surrender. It became, at one period of 
our sittings, a question of vital importance at 
what moment the law of demand and supply 
would come into operation, and what the 
operation of it would exactly be : the demand 
on this occasion, being very urgent indeed ; 
that of several millions of people within a 
few hours of utter starvation, for any kind 
of food whatsoever. Nevertheless, it was 
admitted, in the course of debate, to be 
probable that the divine principle of demand 
and supply might find itself at the eleventh 
hour, and some minutes over, in want of carts 
and horses; and we ventured so far to inter- 
fere with the divine principle as to provide 
carts and horses, with haste which proved, 
happily, in time for the need; but not a 
moment in advance of it. It was farther 
recognized by the committee that the divine 
principle of demand and supply would com- 
mence its operations by charging the poor 
of Paris twelve-pence for a penny's worth of 
whatever they wanted; and would end its 



XXIV PREFACE. 

operations by offering them twelve-pence worth 
for a penny, of whatever they didn't want. 
Whereupon it was concluded by the committee 
that the tiny knot, on this special occasion, 
was scarcely ^^ digniis vindicej^ by the divine 
principle of demand and supply : and that we 
would venture, for once, in a profane manner, 
to provide for the poor of Paris what they 
wanted, when they wanted it. Which, to 
the value of the sums entrusted to us, it will 
be remembered we succeeded in doing. 

But the fact is that the so-called "Law," 
which was felt to be false in this case of 
extreme exigence, is alike false in cases of 
less exigence. It is false always, and every- 
where. Na^y, to such an extent is its existence 
imaginary, that the vulgar economists are not 
even agreed in their account of it ; for some 
of them mean by it, only that prices are 
regulated by the relation between demand 
and supply, which is partly true ; and others 
mean that the relation itself is one with the 
process of which it is unwise to interfere ; a 
statement which is not only, as in the above 
instance, untrue ; but accurately the reverse 
of the truth : for all wise economy political 



PREFACE. XXV 

or domestic, consists in the resolved main- 
tenance of a given relation between supply 
and demand, other than the instinctive, or 
(directly) natural, one. 

Similarly, vulgar political economy asserts 
for a ^'law" that wages are determined by 
competition. 

Now I pay my servants exactly what wages 
I think necessary to make them comfortable. 
The sum is not determined at all by com- 
petition ; but sometimes by my notions of 
their comfort and deserving, and sometimes 
by theirs. If I were to become penniless 
to-morrow, several of them would certainly 
still serve me for nothing. 

In both the real and supposed cases the 
so-called "law" of vulgar political economy 
is absolutely set at defiance. But I cannot 
set the law of gravitation at defiance, nor 
determine that in my house I will not allow 
ice to melt, w^hen the temperature is above 
thirty-two degrees. A true law outside of my 
house, will remain a true one inside of it. 
It is not, therefore, a law of Nature that 
wages are determined by competition. Still 
less is it a law of State, or we should not now 

c 



XXVI PREFACE. 

be disputing about it publicly, to the loss of 
many millions of pounds to the country. The 
fact which vulgar economists have been weak 
enough to imagine a law, is only that for the 
last twenty years a number of very senseless 
persons have attempted to determine wages 
in that manner : and have, in a measure, 
succeeded in occasionally doing so. 

Both in definition of the elements of wealth, 
and in statement of the laws which govern 
its distribution, modern poHtical economy has 
been thus absolutely incompetent, or abso- 
lutely false. And the following treatise is not, 
as it has been asserted with dull pertinacity, 
an endeavour to put sentiment in the place of 
science ; but it contains the exposure of what 
insolently pretended to be a science ; and the 
definition, hitherto unassailed — and I do not 
fear to assert, unassailable — of the material 
elements with which political economy has to 
deal, and the moral principles in which it 
consists ; being not itself a science, but '* a 
system of conduct founded on the sciences, 
and impossible, except under certain condi- 
tions of moral culture." Which is only to 
say, that industry, frugality, and discretion, 



PREFACE. XXVU 

the three foundations of economy, are moral 
quahties/ and cannot be attained without 
moral discipline : a flat truism, the reader may 
think, thus stated, yet a truism which is 
denied both vociferously, and in all endeavour, 
by the entire populace of Europe ; who are 
at present hopeful of obtaining wealth by 
tricks of trade, without industry; who, pos- 
sessing wealth, have lost in the use of it even 
the conception, — how much more the habit ? — 
of frugality ; and who, in the choice of the 
elements of wealth, cannot so much as lose 
— since they have never hitherto at any time 
possessed, — the faculty of discretion. 

Now if the teachers of the pseudo-science 
of economy had ventured to state distinctly 
even the poor conclusions they had reached 
on the subjects respecting which it is most 
dangerous for a populace to be indiscreet, 
they would have soon found, by the use made 
of them, which were true, and which false. 

But on main and vital questions, no political 
economist has hitherto ventured to state one 
guiding principle. I v/ill instance three sub- 
jects of universal importance. National Dress. 
National Rent. National Debt. 



XXVlll PREFACE. 

Now if we are to look in any quarter for 
a systematic and exhaustive statement of the 
principles of a given science, it must certainly 
be from its Professor at Cambridge. 

Take the last edition of Professor Fawcett's 
Manual of Political Economy^ and forming, 
first, clearly in your mind these three 
following questions, see if you can find an 
answer to them. 

I. Does expenditure of capital on the pro- 
duction of luxurious dress and furniture tend 
to make a nation rich or poor ? 

II. Does the payment, by the nation, of a 
tax on its land, or on the produce of it, to a 
certain number of private persons, to be ex- 
pended by them as they please, tend to make 
the nation rich or poor ? 

III. Does the payment, by the nation, for 
an indefinite period, of interest on money 
borrowed from private persons, tend to make 
the nation rich or poor? 

These three questions are, all of them, 
perfectly simple, and primarily vital. Deter- 
mine these, and you have at once a basis for 
national conduct in all important particulars. 
Leave them undetermined, and there is no 



PREFACE. XXIX 

limit to the distress which may be brought 
upon the people by the cunning of its knaves, 
and the folly of its multitudes. 

I will take the three in their order. 

I. Dress. The general impression on the 
public mind at this day is, that the luxury 
of the rich in dress and furniture is a benefit 
to the poor. Probably not even the blindest 
of our political economists would venture to 
assert this in so many words. But where do 
they assert the contrary? During the entire 
period of the reign of the late Emperor it was 
assumed in France, as the first principle of 
fiscal government, that a large portion of the 
funds received as rent from the provincial 
labourer should be expended in the manufac- 
ture of ladies' dresses in Paris. Where is the 
political economist in France, or England, 
who ventured to assert the conclusions of his 
science as adverse to this system ? As early 
as the year 1857 I had done my best to show 
the nature of the error, and to give warning 
of its danger ; * but not one of the men who 
had the foohsh ears of the people intent on 

* Political Economy of Art (Now "A Joy for Ever," — 
Vol. XI. of the Revised Series of Entire Works,— pp. 47-1; 6.) 



XXX PREFACE. 

their words, dared to follow me in speaking 
what would have been an offence to the 
powers of trade ; and the powers of trade in 
Paris had their full way for fourteen years 
more, — with this result, to-day, — as told us 
in precise and curt terms by the Minister of 
PubHc Instruction,* — 

"We have replaced glory by gold, work by 
speculation, faith and honour by scepticism. To 
absolve or glorify immorality ; to make much of 
loose women ; to gratify our eyes with luxury, our 
ears with the tales of orgies ; to aid in the man- 
oeuvres of public robbers, or to applaud them ; to 
laugh at morality, and only believe in success ; to 
love nothing but pleasure, adore nothing but force ; 
to replace work with a fecundity of fancies ; to 
speak without thinking ; to prefer noise to glory ; 
to erect sneering into a system and lying into an 
institution — is this the spectacle that we have 
seen ? — is this the society that we have been ? " 

Of course, other causes, besides the desire 
of luxury in furniture and dress, have been at 
work to produce such consequences ; but the 
most active cause of all has been the passion 

* See report of speech of M. Jules Simon, in Pall Mall 
Gazette of October 27th, 1871. 



PREFACE. XXXI 

for these ; passion unrebuked by the clergy, 
and, for the most part, provoked by economists, 
as advantageous to commerce; nor need we 
think that such results have been arrived at 
in France only ; we are ourselves following 
rapidly on the same road. France, in her 
old wars with us, never was so fatally our 
enemy as she has been in the fellowship 
of fashion, and the freedom of trade : nor, 
to my mind, is any fact recorded of Assyrian 
or Roman luxury more ominous, or ghastly, 
than one which came to my knowledge a few 
weeks ago, in England ; a respectable and 
well-to-do father and mother, in a quiet north 
country town, being turned into the streets 
in their old age at the suit of their only 
daughter's milliner. 

II. Rent. The following account of the 
real nature of rent is given, quite accurately, 
by Professor Fawcett, at page II2 of the last 
edition of his Political Economy : — 

*' Every country has probably been subjugated, 
and grants of vanquished territory were the ordi- 
nary rewards which the conquering chief bestowed 
upon his more distinguished followers. Lands 
obtained by force had to be defended by force; 



XXXll PREFACE. 

and before law had asserted her supremacy, and 
property was made secure, no baron was able to 
retain his possessions, unless those who lived on 
his estates were prepared to defend them. . . .* 
As property became secure, and landlords felt that 
the power of the State would protect them in all 
the rights of property, every vestige of these feudal 
tenures was abolished, and the relation between 
landlord and tenant has thus become purely com- 
mercial. A landlord offers his land to any one 
who is willing to take it ; he is anxious to receive 
the highest rent he can obtain. What are the 
principles which regulate the rent which may thus 
be paid ? " 

These principles the Professor goes on con- 
tentedly to investigate, never appearing to 
contemplate for an instant the possibility of 
the first principle in the whole business — the 
maintenance, by force, of the possession of 
land obtained by force, being ever called in 
question by any human mind. It is, never- 
theless, the nearest task of our day to discover 
how far original theft may be justly en- 
countered by reactionary > theft, or whether 
reactionary theft be indeed theft at all ; and 

* The omitted sentences merely amplify the statement; 
they in no wise modify it. 



PREFACE. XXXIU 

farther, what, excluding either original or 
corrective theft, are the just conditions of the 
possession of land. 

III. Debt. Long since, when, a mere boy, 
I used to sit silently listening to the conver- 
sation of the London merchants who, all of 
them good and sound men of business, were 
wont occasionally to meet round my father's 
dining-table, nothing used to surprise me 
more than the conviction openly expressed 
by some of the soundest and most cautious 
of them, that ^'if there were no National 
debt they would not know what to do with 
their money, or where to place it safely." At 
the 399th page of his Manual, you will find 
Professor Fawcett giving exactly the same 
statement. 

'^ In our own country, this certainty against risk 
of loss is provided by the public funds ; " 

and again, as on the question of rent, the 
Professor proceeds, without appearing for an 
instant to be troubled by any misgiving that 
there may be an essential difference between 
the effects on national prosperity of a Govern- 
ment paying interest on money which it spent 



XXXIV PREFACE. 

^in fireworks fifty years ago, and of a Govern- 
ment paying interest on money to be employed 
to-day on productive labour. 
' That difference, which the reader will find 
stated and examined at length, in §§ 127-129 
of this volume, it is the business of economists, 
before approaching any other question relating 
to government, fully to explain. And the 
paragraphs to which I refer, contain, I believe, 
the only definite statement of it hitherto made. 
The practical result of the absence of any 
such statement is, that capitalists, when they 
do not know what to do with their money, 
persuade the peasants, in various countries, 
that the said peasants want guns to shoot each 
other with. The peasants accordingly borrow 
guns, out of the manufacture of which the 
capitalists get a per-centage, and men of 
science much amusement and credit. Then the 
peasants shoot a certain number of each other, 
until they get tired ; and burn each other's 
homes down in various places. Then they 
put the guns back into towers, arsenals, etc., 
in ornamental patterns; (and the victorious 
party put also some ragged flags in churches). 
And then the capitalists tax both, annually, 



PREFACE. XXXV 

ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of 
the guns and gunpowder. And that is what 
capitaHsts call " knowing what to do with their 
money ; " and what commercial men in general 
call ''practical" as opposed to ''sentimental" 
Political Economy. 

Eleven years ago, in the summer of i860, 
perceiving then fully, (as Carlyle had done 
long before,) what distress was about to come 
on the said populace of Europe through these 
errors of their teachers, I began to do the best 
I might, to combat them, in the series of 
papers for the Cornkill Magazine, since pub- 
lished under the title of Unto this Last. The 
editor of the Magazine was my friend, and 
ventured the insertion of the three first essays ; 
but the outcry against them became then too 
strong for any editor to endure, and he wrote 
to me, with great discomfort to himself, and 
many apologies to me, that the Magazine must 
only admit one Economical Essay more. 

I ,made, with his permission, the last one 
longer than the rest, and gave it blunt con- 
clusion as well as I could — and so the book 
now stands ; but, as I had taken not a little 
pains with the Essays, and knew that they 



XXXVl PREFACE. 

contained better work than most of my former 
writings, and more important truths than all 
of them put together, this violent reprobation 
of them by the Cornhill public set me still 
more gravely thinking ; and, after turning the 
matter hither and thither in my mind for two 
years more, I resolved to make it the central 
work of my life to write an exhaustive treatise 
on Political Economy. It would not have 
been begun, at that time, however, had not 
the editor of Fraser^s Magazine written to me, 
saying that he believed there was something 
in my theories, and would risk the admission 
of what I chose to write on this dangerous 
subject; whereupon, cautiously, and at inter- 
vals, during the winter of 1862-63, I sent him, 
and he ventured to print, the preface of the 
intended work, divided into four chapters, 
Then, though the Editor had not wholly lost 
courage, the Publisher indignantly interfered ; 
and the readers of Fraser, as those of the 
Cornhillj were protected, for that time, from 
farther disturbance on my part. Subsequently, 
loss of health, family distress, and various 
untoward chances, prevented my proceeding 
with the body of the book ; — seven years have 



PREFACE. XXXVll 

passed ineffectually; and I am now fain to 
reprint the Preface by itself, under the title 
which I intended for the whole. 

Not discontentedly; being, at this time of 
life, resigned to the sense of failure ; and also, 
because the preface is complete in itself as a 
body of definitions, which I now require for 
reference in the course of my Letters to Work- 
men ; by which also, in time, I trust less 
formally to accomplish the chief purpose of 
Munera Pulveris practically summed in the 
two paragraphs 2J and 28 : namely, to ex- 
amine the moral results and possible rectifi- 
cations of the laws of distribution of wealth, 
which have prevailed hitherto without debate 
among men. Laws which ordinary economists 
assume to be inviolable, and which ordinary 
socialists imagine to be on the eve of total 
abrogation. But they are both alike deceived. 
The laws which at present regulate the posses- 
sion of wealth are unjust, because the motives 
which provoke to its attainment are impure; 
but no socialism can effect their abrogation, 
unless it can abrogate also covetousness and 
pride, which it is by no means yet in the way 
of doing. Nor can the change be, in any 



XXXVlll PREFACE. 

case, to the extent that has been imagined. 
Extremes of luxury may be forbidden, and 
agony of penury relieved ; but nature intends, 
and the utmost efforts of socialism will not 
hinder the fulfilment of her intention, that a 
provident person shall always be richer than a 
spendthrift ; and an ingenious one more com- 
fortable than a fool. But, indeed, the adjust- 
ment of the possession of the products of 
industry depends more on their nature than 
their quantity, and on wise determination 
therefore of the aims of industry. A nation 
which desires true wealth, desires it mode- 
rately, and can therefore distribute it with 
kindness, and possess it with pleasure ; but 
one which desires false wealth, desires it 
immoderately, and can neither dispense it with 
justice, nor enjoy it in peace. 

Therefore, needing, constantly in my pre- 
sent work, to refer to the definitions of true 
and false wealth given in the following Essays, 
I republish them with careful revisal. They 
v/ere written abroad; partly at Milan, partly 
during a winter residence on the south-eastern 
slope of the Mont Saleve, near Geneva ; and 
sent to London in as legible MS. as I could 



PREFACE. XXXIX 

write; but I never revised the press sheets, 
and have been obliged, accordingly, now to 
amend the text here and there, or correct it 
in unimportant particulars. Wherever any 
modification has involved change in the sense, 
it is enclosed in square brackets ; and what 
few explanatory comments I have felt it neces- 
sary to add, have been indicated in the same 
manner. No explanatory comments, I regret 
to perceive, will suffice to remedy the mischief 
of my affected concentration of language, into 
the habit of which I fell by thinking too long 
over particular passages, in many and many 
a solitary walk towards the mountains of 
Bonneville or Annecy. But I never intended 
the book for anything else than a dictionary 
of reference, and that for earnest readers ; 
who will, I have good hope, if they find what 
they want in it, forgive the affectedly curt 
expressions. 

The Essays, as originally pubHshed, were, 
as I have just stated, four in number. I have 
now, more conveniently, divided the whole 
into six chapters ; and (as I purpose through- 
out this edition of my works; numbered the 
paragraphs. 



Xl PREFACE. 

I inscribed the first volume of this series to 
the friend who aided me in chief sorrow. Let 
me inscribe the second to the friend and guide 
who has urged me to all chief labour, Thomas 
Carlyle. 

I would that some better means were in 
my power of showing reverence to the man 
who alone, of all our masters of literature, has 
written, without thought of himself, what he 
knew it to be needful for the people of his time 
to hear, if the will to hear were in them : 
whom, therefore, as the time draws near 
when his task must be ended. Republican 
and Free-thoughted England assaults with im- 
patient reproach ; and out of the abyss of her 
cowardice in policy and dishonour in trade, 
sets the hacks of her literature to speak evil, 
grateful to her ears, of the Solitary Teacher 
who has asked her to be brave for the help of 
Man, and just, for the love of God. 

Denmark Hill, 
25//? November, 1871. 



MUNERA PULVERIS 



" Te maris et terr^e numeroque carentis aren^ 
Mensorem cohibent, Archyta, 
Pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum 

MUNERA." 



CHAPTER I. 

DEFINITIONS. 

I. As domestic economy regulates the acts and 
habits of a household, Political Econoni}^ regu- 
lates those of a society or State, with reference 
to the means of its maintenance. 

Political economy is neither an art nor a 
science; but a system of conduct and legisla- 
ture, founded on the sciences, directing the 
arts, and impossible, except under certain con- 
ditions of moral culture. 

2. The study which lately in England has 
been called Political Economy is in reality 
nothing more than the investigation of some 



2 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

accidental phenomena of modern commercial 
operations, nor has it been true in its inves- 
tigation even of these. It has no connection 
whatever with political economy, as understood 
and treated of by the great thinkers of past 
ages ; and as long as its unscholarly and unde- 
fined statements are allowed to pass under the 
same name, every word written on the subject 
by those thinkers — and chiefly the words of 
Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, and Bacon — must be 
nearly useless to mankind. The reader must 
not, therefore, be surprised at the care and in- 
sistance with which I have retained the literal 
and earliest sense of all important terms used in 
these papers ; for a word is usually well made 
at the time it is first wanted; its youngest 
meaning has in it the full strength of its youth ; 
subsequent senses are commonly warped or 
weakened ; and as all careful thinkers are sure 
to have used their words accurately, the first 
condition, in order to be able to avail ourselves 
of their sayings at all, is firm definition of 
terms. 

3. By the ''maintenance" of a State is to 
be understood the support of its population in 
healthy and happy life ; and the increase of 



I. DEFINITIONS. 3 

their numbers, so far as that increase is con- 
sistent with their happiness. It is not the 
object of pohtical economy to increase the 
numbers of a nation at the cost of common 
health or comfort ; nor to increase indefinitely 
the comfort of individuals, by sacrifice of sur- 
rounding lives, or possibilities of life. 

4. The assumption which lies at the root 
of nearly all erroneous reasoning on political 
economy, — namely, that its object is to accumu- 
late money or exchangeable property, — may be 
shown in a few words to be without founda- 
tion. For no economist would admit national 
economy to be legitimate which proposed to 
itself only the building of a pyramid of gold. 
He would declare the gold to be wasted, were 
it to remain in the monumental form, and 
would say it ought to be employed. But to 
what end ? Either it must be used only to 
gain more gold, and build a larger pyramid, or 
for some purpose other than the gaining of 
gold. And this other purpose, however at 
first apprehended, will be found to resolve 
itself finally into the service of man ; — that is 
to say, the extension, defence, or comfort of 
his life. The golden pyramid may perhaps be 



4 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

providently built, perhaps improvidently ; but 
the wisdom or folly of the accumulation can 
only be determined by our having first clearly 
stated the aim of all economy, namely, the ex- 
tension of life. 

If the accumulation of money, or of ex- 
changeable property, were a certain means of 
extending existence, it would be useless, in 
discussing economical questions, to fix our 
attention upon the more distant object — life — 
instead of the immediate one — money. But 
it is not so. Money may sometimes be accu- 
mulated at the cost of life, or by limitations 
of it ; that is to say, either by hastening the 
deaths of men, or preventing their births. It 
is therefore necessary to keep clearly in view 
the ultimate object of economy ; and to deter- 
mine the expediency of minor operations with 
reference to that ulterior end. 

5. It has been just stated that the object of 
political economy is the continuance not only 
of life, but of healthy and happy life. But all 
true happiness is both a consequence and cause 
of life : it is a sign of its vigour, and source of 
its continuance. All true suffering is in like 
manner a consequence and cause of death. I 



1, DEFINITIONS. 5 

shall therefore, in future, use the word ''Life " 
singly : but let it be understood to include in 
its signification the happiness and power of the 
entire human nature, body and soul. 

6. That human nature, as its Creator made 
it, and maintains it wherever His laws are 
observed, is entirely harmonious. No physical 
error can be more profound, no moral error 
more dangerous, than that involved in the 
monkish doctrine of the opposition of body to 
soul. No soul can be perfect in an imperfect 
body: no body perfect without perfect soul. 
Every right action and true thought sets the 
seal of its beauty on person and face ; every 
wrong action and foul thought its seal of dis- 
tortion; and the various aspects of humanity 
might be read as plainly as a printed history, 
were it not that the impressions are so com- 
plex that it must always in some cases (and, 
in the present state of our knowledge, in all 
cases) be impossible to decipher them com- 
pletely. Nevertheless, the face of a consist- 
ently just, and of a consistently unjust person, 
may always be rightly distinguished at a 
glance ; and if the qualities are continued by 
descent through a generation or two, there 



6 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

arises a complete distinction of race. Both 
moral and physical qualities are communicated 
by descent, far more than they can be de- 
veloped by education, (though both may be 
destroyed by want of education) ; and there is 
as yet no ascertained Hmit to the nobleness of 
person and mind which the human creature 
may attain, by persevering observance of the 
laws of God respecting its birth and training. 

7. We must therefore yet farther define the 
aim of political economy to be '' The multipli- 
cation of human life at the highest standard." 
It might at first seem questionable whether we 
should endeavour to maintain a small number 
of persons of the highest type of beauty and 
intelligence, or a larger number of an inferior 
class. But I shall be able to show in the 
sequel, that the way to maintain the largest 
number is first to aim at the highest standard. 
Determine the noblest type of man, and aim 
simply at maintaining the largest possible 
number of persons of that class, and it will 
be found that the largest possible number of 
every healthy subordinate class must neces- 
sarily be produced also. 

8. The perfect type of manhood, as just 



I. DEFINITIONS. 7 

Stated, involves the perfections (whatever we 
may hereafter determine these to be) of his 
body, affections, and intelHgence. The mate- 
rial things, therefore, which it is the object 
of political economy to produce and use, (or 
accumulate for use,) are things which serve 
either to sustain and comfort the body, or 
exercise rightly the affections and form the 
intelligence.* Whatever truly serves either 
of these purposes is '^ useful " to man, whole- 
some, healthful, helpful, or holy. By seeking 
such things, man prolongs and increases his 
life upon the earth. 

On the other hand, whatever does not serve 
either of these purposes, — much more whatever 
counteracts them, — is in like manner useless 
to man, unwholesome, unhelpful, or unholy; 
and by seeking such things man shortens 
and diminishes his life upon the earth. 

9. And neither with respect to things useful 
or useless can man's estimate of them alter 
their nature. Certain substances being good 
for his food, and others noxious to him, what 
he thinks or wishes respecting them can 
neither change, nor prevent, their power. If 
* See Appendix I. 



8 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

he eats corn, he will live ; if nightshade, he 
will die. If he produce or make good and 
beautiful things, they will Re- Create him ; 
(note the solemnity and weight of the word); 
if bad and ugly things, they will '^corrupt" 
or ** break in pieces " — that is, in the exact 
degree of their power, Kill him. For every 
hour of labour, however enthusiastic or well 
intended, which he spends for that which is 
not bread, so much possibility of life is lost 
to him. His fancies, likings, beliefs, however 
brilliant, eager, or obstinate, are of no avail 
if they are set on a false object. Of all that 
he has laboured for, the eternal law of heaven 
and earth measures out to him for reward, 
to the utmost atom, that part which he ought 
to have laboured for, and withdraws from him 
(or enforces on him, it may be) inexorably, 
that part which he ought not to have laboured 
for until, on his summer threshing-floor, stands 
his heap of corn ; little or much, not according 
to his labour, but to his discretion. No 
"commercial arrangements," no painting of 
surfaces, nor alloying of substances, will 
avail him a pennyweight. Nature asks of 
him calmly and inevitably. What have you 



I. DEFINITIONS. 9 

found, or formed — the right thing or the 
wrong ? By the right thing you shall live ; 
by the wrong you shall die. 

lO. To thoughtless persons it seems other- 
wise. The world looks to them as if they 
could cozen it out of some ways and means 
of life. But they cannot cozen IT : they can 
only cozen their neighbours. The world is not 
to be cheated of a grain; not so much as a 
breath of its air can be drawn surreptitiously. 
For every piece of wise work done, so much 
life is granted ; for every piece of foolish 
work, nothing; for every piece of wicked 
work, so much death is allotted. This is as 
sure as the courses of day and night. But 
when the means of life are once produced, 
men, by their various struggles and industries 
of accumulation or exchange, may variously 
gather, waste, restrain, or distribute them ; 
necessitating, in proportion to the waste or 
restraint, accurately, so much more death. 
The rate and range of additional death are 
measured by the rate and range of waste ; 
and are inevitable ; — the only question (deter- 
mined mostly by fraud in peace, and force in 
war) is, Who is to die, and how ? 



10 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

II. Such being the everlasting law of 
human existence, the essential work of the 
political economist is to determine what are 
in reality useful or life-giving things, and by 
what degrees and kinds of labour they are 
attainable and distributable. This investiga- 
tion divides itself under three great heads; 
— the studies, namely, of the phenomena, 
first, of Wealth ; secondly, of MONEY ; and 
thirdly, of RICHES. 

These terms are often used as synonymous, 
but they signify entirely different things. 
"Wealth" consists of things in themselves 
valuable ; '' Money," of documentary claims to 
the possession of such things ; and *' Riches " 
is a relative term, expressing the magnitude 
of the possessions of one person or society 
as compared with those of other persons or 
societies. 

The study of Wealth is a province of natural 
science : — it deals with the essential properties 
of things. 

The study of Money is a province of com- 
mercial science : — it deals with conditions of 
engagement and exchange. 

The study of Riches is a province of moral 



1. DEFINITIONS. I I 

science : — it deals with the due relations of 
men to each other in regard of material pos- 
sessions ; and with the just laws of their asso- 
ciation for purposes of labour. 

I shall in this first chapter shortly sketch 
out the range of subjects which will come 
before us as we follow these three branches 
of inquiry. 

12. And first of WEALTH, which, it has been 
said, consists of things essentially valuable. 
We now, therefore, need a definition of 
'Walue." 

''Value" signifies the strength, or "avail- 
ing" of anything towards the sustaining of 
life, and, is always twofold; that is to say, 
primarily, INTRINSIC, and secondarily, EFFEC- 
TUAL. 

The reader must, by anticipation, be warned 
against confusing value with cost, or with 
price. Value is the life-giving pozver of any - 
timig ; cost, the quantity of labour required to 
produce it; price, the quantity of labour zvhich 
its possessor zvill take in exchange for it. * Cost 

[* Observe these definitions,— they are of much import- 
ance,— and connect with them the sentences in italics on 
next page.] 



I 2 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

and price are commercial conditions, to be 
studied under the head of money. 

13. Intrinsic value is the absolute power of 
anything to support life. A sheaf of wheat 
of given quality and weight has in it a measur- 
able power of sustaining the substance of the 
body; a cubic foot of pure air, a fixed power 
of sustaining its warmth ; and a cluster of 
flowers of given beauty a fixed power of en- 
Hvening or animating the senses and heart. 

It does not in the least affect the intrinsic 
value of the wheat, the air, or the flowers, that 
men refuse or despise them. Used or not, 
their own power is in them, and that particular 
power is in nothing else. 

14. But in order that this value of theirs 
may become effectual, a certain state is neces- 
sary in the recipient of it. The digesting, 
breathing, and perceiving functions must be 
perfect in the human creature before the food, 
air, or flowers can become of their full value 
to it. The production of effectual value y there- 
fore ^ always vivo Ives two needs : first, the pro- 
duction of a thing essentially useful ; then the 
prodtLction of the capacity to use it. Where the 
intrinsic value and acceptant capacity come 



I. DEFINITIONS. I 3 

together there is Effectual value, or wealth ; 
where there is either no intrinsic value, or no 
acceptant capacity, there is no effectual value; 
that is to say, no wealth. A horse is no wealth 
to us if we cannot ride, nor a picture if we 
cannot see, nor can any noble thing be zvealth, 
except to a noble person. As the aptness of the 
user increases, the effectual value of the thing 
used increases; and in its entirety can co-exist 
only with perfect skill of use, and fitness of 
nature. 

15. Valuable material things may be con- 
veniently referred to five heads : 

(i.) Land, with its associated air, water, and 
organisms. 

(ii.) Houses, furniture, and instruments. 

(iii.) Stored or prepared food, medicine, and 
articles of bodily luxury, including clothing. 

(iv.) Books. 

(v.) Works of art. 

The conditions of value in these things are 
briefly as follows : — 

16. (i.) Land. Its value is twofold; first, 
as producing food and mechanical power ; 
secondly, as an object of sight and thought, 
producing intellectual power. 



14 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

Its value, as a means of producing food 
and mechanical power, varies with its form (as 
mountain or plain), with its substance (in soil 
or mineral contents), and with its climate. All 
these conditions of intrinsic value must be 
known and complied with by the men who 
have to deal with it, in order to give effectual 
value; but at any given time and place, the 
intrinsic value is fixed : such and such a piece 
of land, with its associated lakes and seas, 
rightly treated in surface and substance, can 
produce precisely so much food and power, 
and no more. 

The second element of value in land being 
its beauty, united with such conditions of 
space and form as are necessary for exercise, 
and for fulness of animal life, land of the 
highest value in these respects will be that 
lying in temperate climates, and boldly varied 
in form ; removed from unhealthy or danger- 
ous influences (as of miasm or volcano) ; and 
capable of sustaining a rich fauna and flora. 
Such land, carefully tended by the hand of man, 
so far as to remove from it unsightlinesses and 
evidences of decay, guarded from violence, and 
inhabited, under man's affectionate protection, 



I. DEFINITIONS. I 5 

by every kind of living creature that can 
occupy it in peace, is the most precious 
''property" that human beings can possess. 

17. (ii.) Buildings, furniture, and instru- 
ments. 

The value of buildings consists, first, in per- 
manent strength, with convenience of form, 
of size, and of position ; so as to render 
employment peaceful, social intercourse easy, 
temperature and air healthy. The advisable or 
possible magnitude of cities and mode of their 
distribution in squares, streets, courts, etc. ; 
the relative value of sites of land, and the 
modes of structure which are healthiest and 
most permanent, have to be studied under this 
head. 

The value of buildings consists secondly in 
historical association, and architectural beauty, 
of which we have to examine the influence on 
manners and life. 

The value of instruments consists, first, in 
their power of shortening labour, or otherwise 
accomplishing what human strength unaided 
could not. The kinds of work which are 
severally best accomplished by hand or by 
machine ; — the effect of machinery in gathering 



I 6 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

and multiplying population, and its influence 
on the minds and bodies of such population ; 
together with the conceivable uses of machinery 
on a colossal scale in accomplishing mighty 
and useful works, hitherto unthought of, such 
as the deepening of large river channels ; — 
changing the surface of mountainous districts ; 
— irrigating tracts of desert in the torrid zone ; 
— breaking up, and thus rendering capable of 
quicker fusion, edges of ice in the northern 
and southern Arctic seas, etc., so rendering 
parts of the earth habitable which hitherto 
have been lifeless, are to be studied under 
this head. 

The value of instruments is, secondarily, in 
their aid to abstract sciences. The degree in 
which the multiplication of such instruments 
should be encouraged, so as to make them, if 
large, easy of access to numbers (as costly 
telescopes), or so cheap as that they might, in 
a serviceable form, become a common part of 
the furniture of households, is to be considered 
under this head.* 

* I cannot now recast these sentences, pedantic in their 
generaHzation, and intended more for index than statement, 
but I must guard the reader from thinking that I ever wish 



I. DEFINITIONS. I J 

1 8. (iii.) Food, medicine, and articles of 
luxury. Under this head we shall have to 
examine the possible methods of obtaining 
pure food in such security and equality of 
supply as to avoid both waste and famine : 
then the economy of medicine and just range 
of sanitary law : finally the economy of luxury, 
partly an aesthetic and partly an ethical 
question. 

19. (iv.) Books. The value of these con- 
sists. 

First, in their power of preserving and com- 
municating the knowledge of facts. 

Secondly, in their power of exciting vital 
or noble emotion and intellectual action. 
They have also their corresponding negative 
powers of disguising and effacing the memory 
of facts, and killing the noble emotions, or 
exciting base ones. Under these two heads we 
have to consider the economical and educa- 
tional value, positive and negative, of litera- 
ture ; — the means of producing and educating 

for cheapness by bad quality. A poor boy need not always 
learn mathematics ; but, if you set him to do so, have the 
farther kindness to give him good compasses, not cheap ones, 
whose points bend lilvc lead.] 

B 



I 8 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

good authors, and the means and advisabihty 
of rendering good books generally accessible, 
and directing the reader's choice to them. 

20. (v.) Works of art. The value of these 
is of the same nature as that of books ; but the 
laws of their production and possible modes 
of distribution are very different, and require 
separate examination. 

21. II.— Money. Under this head, we shall 
have to examine the laws of currency and 
exchange ; of which I will note here the first 
separate principles. 

Money has been inaccurately spoken of as 
merely a means of exchange. But it is far 
more than this. It is a documentary expres- 
sion of legal claim. It is not wealth, but 
a documentary claim to wealth, being the 
sign of the relative quantities of it, or of the 
labour producing it, to which, at. a given time, 
persons, or societies, are entitled. 

If all the money in the world, notes and 
gold, were destroyed in an instant, it would 
leave the world neither richer nor poorer than 
it was. But it would leave the individual 
inhabitants of it in different relations. 

Money is, therefore, correspondent in its 



I. DEFINITIONS. I 9 

nature to the title-deed of an estate. Though 
the deed be burned, the estate still exists, but 
the right to it has become disputable.^ 

22. The real worth of money remains 
unchanged, as long as the proportion of the 
quantity of existing money to the quantity 
of existing wealth or available labour remains 
unchanged. 

If the wealth increases, but not the money, 
the worth of the money increases ; if the 
money increases, but not the wealth, the worth 
of the money diminishes. 

23. Money, therefore, cannot be arbitrarily 
multiplied, any more than title-deeds can. So 
long as the existing wealth or available labour 
is not fully represented by the currency, the 
currency may be increased without diminution 
of the assigned worth of its pieces. But when 
the existing wealth, or available labour, is once 
fully represented, every piece of money thrown 
into circulation diminishes the worth of every 
other existing piece, in the proportion it bears 
to the number of them, provided the new piece 
be received with equal credit; if not, the 
depreciation of worth takes place, according to 
the degree of its credit. 



20 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

24. When, however, new money, composed 
of some substance of supposed intrinsic value 
(as of gold), is brought into the market, or 
when new notes are issued which are supposed 
to be deserving of credit, the desire to obtain 
the money will, under certain circumstances, 
stimulate industry : an additional quantity of 
wealth is immediately produced, and if this be 
in proportion to the new claims advanced, 
the value of the existing currency is undepre- 
ciated. If the stimulus given be so great as 
to produce more goods than are proportioned 
to the additional coinage, the worth of the 
existing currency will be raised. 

Arbitrary control and issues of currency 
affect the production of wealth, by acting on 
the hopes and fears of men, and are, under 
certain circumstances, wise. But the issue of 
additional currency to meet the exigencies of 
immediate expense, is merely one of the dis- 
guised forms of borrowing or taxing. It is, 
however, in the present low state of economical 
knowledge, often possible for governments to 
venture on an issue of currency, when they 
could not venture on an additional loan or tax, 
because the real operation of such issue is 



I. DEFINITIONS. 2 I 

not understood by the people, and the pressure 
of it is irregularly distributed, and with an 
unperceived gradation. 

25. The use of substances of intrinsic value 
as the materials of a currency, is a barbarism ; 
— a remnant of the conditions of barter, which 
alone render commerce possible among savage 
nations. It is, however, still necessary, partly 
as a mechanical check on arbitrary issues; 
partly as a means of exchanges with foreign 
nations. In proportion to the extension of 
civilization, and increase of trustworthiness 
in governments, it will cease. So long as it 
exists, the phenomena of the cost and price of 
the articles used for currency are mingled with 
those proper to currency itself, in an almost 
inextricable manner : and the market worth of 
bullion is affected by multitudinous accidental 
circumstances, which have been traced, with 
more or less success, by writers on commercial 
operations : but with these variations the true 
political economist has no more to do than an 
engineer, fortifying a harbour of refuge against 
Atlantic tide, has to concern himself with the 
cries or quarrels of children who dig pools with 
their fingers for its streams among the sand. 



2 2 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

26. III. — RiCPIES. According to the various 
industry, capacity, good fortune, and desires 
of men, they obtain greater or smaller share of, 
and claim upon, the wealth of the world. 

The inequalities between these shares, always 
in some degree just and necessary, may be 
either restrained by law or circumstance within 
certain limits ; or may increase indefinitely. 

Where no moral or legal restraint is put 
upon the exercise of the will and intellect of 
the stronger, shrewder, or more covetous men, 
these differences become ultimately enormous. 
But as soon as they become so distinct in their 
extremes as that, on one side, there shall be 
manifest redundance of possession, and on the 
other manifest pressure of need, — the terms 
'' riches " and ^' poverty " are used to express 
the opposite states ; being contrary only as 
the terms " warmth " and " cold " are con- 
traries, of which neither implies an actual 
degree, but only a relation to other degrees, 
of temperature. 

27. Respecting riches, the economist has to 
inquire, first, into the advisable modes of their 
collection ; secondly, into the advisable modes 
of their administration. 



I. DEFINITIONS. 23 

Respecting the collection of national riches, 
he has to inquire, first, whether he is justified 
in calling the nation rich, if the quantity of 
wealth it possesses relatively to the wealth of 
other nations, be large; irrespectively of the 
manner of its distribution. Or does the mode 
of distribution in any wise affect the nature of 
the riches ? Thus, if the king alone be rich — 
suppose Croesus or Mausolus — are the Lydians 
or Carians therefore a rich nation ? Or if a 
few slave-masters are rich, and the nation is 
otherwise composed of slaves, is it to be called 
a rich nation ? For if not, and the ideas of a 
certain mode of distribution or operation in 
the riches, and of a certain degree of freedom 
in the people, enter into our idea of riches as 
attributed to a people, we shall have to define 
the degree of fluency, or circulative character 
which is essential to the nature of common 
wealth ; and the degree of independence of action 
required in its possessors. Questions which 
look as if they would take time in answering.* 

28. And farther. Since the inequality, which 

[* I regret the ironical manner in which this passage, one 
of great importance in the matter of it, was written. The 
gist of it is, that the first of all inquiries respecting the 



2 4 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

is the condition of riches, may be established 
in two opposite modes — namely, by increase of 
possession on the one side, and by decrease 
of it on the other — we have to inquire, with 
respect to any given state of riches, precisely 
in what manner the correlative poverty was 
produced : that is to say, whether by being 
surpassed only, or being depressed also; and 
if by being depressed, what are the advantages, 
or the contrary, conceivable in the depression. 
For instance, it being one of the commonest 
advantages of being rich to entertain a number 
of servants, we have to inquire, on the one 
side, what economical process produced the 
riches of the master ; and on the other, what 
economical process produced the poverty of the 
persons who serve him; and what advantages 
each, on his own side, derives from the result. 

29. These being the main questions touch- 
ing the collection of riches, the next, or last, 
part of the inquiry is into their administration. 

Their possession involves three great 
economical powers which require separate 

wealth of any nation is not, how much it has ; but whether it 
is in a form that can be used, and in the possession of persons 
who can use it.] 



I.^ — DEFINITIONS. 2 5 

examination : namely, the powers of selection, 
direction, and provision. 

The power of SELECTION relates to things 
of which the supply is limited (as the supply 
of best things is always). When it becomes 
matter of question to whom such things are to 
belong, the richest person has necessarily the 
first choice, unless some arbitrary mode of 
distribution be otherwise determined upon. 
The business of the economist is to show how 
this choice may be a Wise one. 

The power of DIRECTION arises out of the 
necessary relation of rich men to poor, which 
ultimately, in one way or another, involves the 
direction of, or authority over, the labour of 
the poor; and this nearly as much over their 
mental as their bodily labour. The business 
of the economist is to show how this direction 
may be a Just one. 

The power of PROVISION is dependent upon 
the redundance of wealth, which may of course 
by active persons be made available in pre- 
paration for future work or future profit; in 
which function riches have generally received 
the name of capital ; that is to say, of head-, 
or source-material. The business of the 



26 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

economist is to show how this provision may 
be a Distant one. 

30. The examination of these three func- 
tions of riches will embrace every final problem 
of political economy; — and, above, or before 
all, this curious and vital problem, — whether, 
since the wholesome action of riches in these 
three functions will depend (it appears) on the 
Wisdom, Justice, and Farsightedness of the 
holders ; and it is by no means to be assumed 
that persons primarily rich, must therefore be 
just and wise, — it may not be ultimately pos- 
sible so, or somewhat so, to arrange matters, as 
that persons primarily just and wise, should 
therefore be rich ? 

Such being the general plan of the inquiry 
before us, I shall not limit myself to any con- 
secutive following of it, having hardly any 
good hope of being able to complete so 
laborious a work as it must prove to me ; but 
from time to time, as I have leisure, shall 
endeavour to carry forward this part or that, 
as may be immediately possible; indicating 
always with accuracy the place which the 
particular essay will or should take in the 
completed system. 



CHAPTER II. 



STORE-KEEPING. 



31. The first chapter having consisted of httle 
more than definition of terms, I purpose, in 
this, to expand and illustrate the given defi- 
nitions. 

The view which has here been taken of the 
nature of wealth, namely, that it consists in 
an intrinsic value developed by a vital power, 
is directly opposed to two nearly universal 
conceptions of wealth. In the assertion that 
value is primarily intrinsic, it opposes the idea 
that anything which is an object of desire to 
numbers, and is limited in quantity, so as to 
have rated worth in exchange, may be called, 
or virtually become, wealth. And in the 
assertion that value is, secondarily, dependent 
upon power in the possessor, it opposes the 
idea that the worth of things depends on the 



28 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

demand for them, instead of on the use of 
them. Before going farther, we will make 
these two positions clearer. 

32. I. First. All wealth is intrinsic, and 
is not constituted by the judgment of men. 
This is easily seen in the case of things affect- 
ing the body; we know, that no force of 
fantasy will make stones nourishing, or poison 
innocent ; but it is less apparent in things 
affecting the mind. We are easily — perhaps 
willingly — misled by the appearance of bene- 
ficial results obtained by industries addressed 
wholly to the gratification of fanciful desire; 
and apt to suppose that whatever is widely 
coveted, dearly bought, and pleasurable in 
possession, must be included in our definition 
of wealth. It is the more difficult to quit our- 
selves of this error because many things which 
are true wealth in moderate use, become false 
wealth in immoderate; and many things are 
mixed of good and evil, — as mostly, books, and 
works of art, — out of w^hich one person will 
get the good, and another the evil; so that 
it seems as if there were no fixed good or evil 
in the things themselves, but only in the view 
taken, and use made of them. 



II. — STORE-KEEPING. 29 

But that is not so. The evil and good are 
fixed ; in essence, and in proportion. And in 
things in which evil depends upon excess, 
the point of excess, though indefinable, is fixed; 
and the power of the thing is on the hither 
side for good, and on the farther side for evil. 
And in all cases this power is inherent, not 
dependent on opinion or choice. Our thoughts 
of things neither make, nor mar their eternal 
force; nor — which is the most serious point 
for future consideration — can they prevent 
the effect of it (within certain limits) upon 
ourselves. 

33. Therefore, the object of any special 
analysis of wealth will be not so much to 
enumerate what is serviceable, as to distin- 
guish what is destructive; and to show that 
it is inevitably destructive ; that to receive 
pleasure from an evil thing is not to escape 
from, or alter the evil of it, but to be altered 
by it ; that is, to suffer from it to the utmost, 
having our own nature, in that degree, made 
evil also. And it may be shown farther, that, 
through whatever length of time or subtle- 
ties of connexion the harm is accomplished, 
(being also less or more according to the 



30 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

fineness and worth of the humanity on which 
it is wrought,) still, nothing but harm ever 
comes of a bad thing. 

34. So that, in sum, the term wealth is 
never to be attached to the accidental object of 
a morbid desire, but only to the constant object 
of a legitimate one.^ By the fury of ignor- 
ance, and fitfulness of caprice, large interests 
may be continually attached to things unser- 
viceable or hurtful; if their nature could be 
altered by our passions, the science of poHtical 
Economy would remain, what it has been 
hitherto among us, the weighing of clouds, 
and the portioning out of shadows. But of 
ignorance there is no science; and of caprice 
no law. Their disturbing forces interfere 
with the operations of faithful Economy, but 
have nothing in common with them : she, the 
calm arbiter of national destiny, regards 
only essential power for good in all that 
she accumulates, and alike disdains the 



* [Remember carefully this statement, that Wealth con- 
sists only in the things which the nature of humanity has 
rendered in all ages, and must render in all ages to come, 
(that is what I meant by "constant,") the objects of legiti- 
mate desire. And see Appendix II.] 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 3 I 

wanderings * of imagination, and the thirsts 
of disease. 

35. 11. Secondly. The assertion that wealth 
is not only intrinsic, but dependent, in order 
to become effectual, on a given degree of vital 
power in its possessor, is opposed to another 
popular view of wealth ; — namely, that though 
it may always be constituted by caprice, it is, 
when so constituted, a substantial thing, of which 
given quantities may be counted as existing 
here, or there, and exchangeable at rated prices. 

In this view there are three errors. The 
first and chief is the overlooking the fact that 
all exchangeableness of commodity, or effective 
demand for it, depends on the sum of capacity 
for its use existing, here or elsewhere. The 
book we cannot read, or picture we take no 
delight in, may indeed be called part of our 
wealth, in so far as we have power of ex- 
changing either for something we like better. 
But our power of effecting such exchange, and 
yet more, of effecting it to advantage, depends 
absolutely on the number of accessible persons 
who can understand the book, or enjoy the 

[* The Wanderings, observe, not the Right goings, of 
Imagination. She is very far from despising these.] 



32 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

painting, and who will dispute the possession 
of them. Thus the actual worth of either, 
even to us, depends no more on their essential 
goodness than on the capacity existing some- 
where for the perception of it ; and it is vain 
in any completed system of production to 
think of obtaining one without the other. So 
that, though the true political economist 
knows that co-existence of capacity for use 
with temporary possession cannot be always 
secured, the final fact, on which he bases 
all action and administration, is that, in the 
whole nation, or group of nations, he has 
to deal with, for every atom of intrinsic value 
produced he must with exactest chemistry 
produce its twin atom of acceptant digestion, 
or understanding capacity; or, in the degree 
of his failure, he has no wealth. Nature's 
challenge to us is, in earnest, as the Assyrian's 
mock : '' I will give thee two thousand horses, 
if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon 
them." Bavieca's paces are brave, if the Cid 
backs him ; but woe to us, if we take the dust 
of capacity, wearing the armour of it, for 
capacity itself, for so all procession, however 
goodly in the show of it, is to the tomb. 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 3 3 

36. The second error in this popular view of 
wealth is, that in giving the name of wealth to 
things which we cannot use, we in reality con- 
fuse wealth with money. The land we have 
no skill to cultivate, the book which is sealed 
to us, or dress which is superfluous, may 
indeed be exchangeable, but as such are 
nothing more than a cumbrous form of bank- 
note, of doubtful or slow convertibility. As 
long as we retain possession of them, we 
merely keep our bank-notes in the shape of 
gravel or clay, or book-leaves, or of embroidered 
tissue. Circumstances may, perhaps, render 
such forms the safest, or a certain complacency 
may attach to the exhibition of them ; into 
both these advantages we shall inquire after- 
wards ; I wish the reader only to observe here, 
that exchangeable property which we cannot 
use is, to us personally, merely one of the 
forms of money, not of wealth. 

37. The third error in the popular view is 
the confusion of Guardianship with Possession ; 
the real state of men of property being, too 
commonly, that of curators, not possessors, of 
wealth. 

A man's power over his property is, at the 

c 



34 » MUNERA PULVERIS. 

widest range of it, fivefold ; it is power of Use, 
for himself, Administration, to others. Ostenta- 
tion, Destruction, or Bequest; and possession 
is in use only, which for each man is sternly 
limited ; so that such things, and so much of 
them as he can use, are, indeed, well for him, 
or Wealth ; and more of them, or any other 
things, are ill for him, or Illth.* Plunged to 
the lips in Orinoco, he shall drink to his thirst 
measure ; more at his peril : with a thousand 
oxen on his lands, he shall eat to his hunger 
measure ; more, at his peril. He cannot hve in 
two houses at once ; a few bales of silk or wool 
will suffice for the fabric of all the clothes he 
can ever wear, and a few books will probably 
hold all the furniture good for his brain. 
Beyond these, in the best of us but narrow, 
capacities, we have but the power of admin- 
istering, or ;;2<2/-administering, wealth : (that 
is to say, distributing, lending, or increasing 
it) ; — of exhibiting it (as in magnificence 
of retinue or furniture), — of destroying, or, 
finally, of bequeathing it. And with multi- 
tudes of rich men, administration degenerates 
into curatorship ; they merely hold their 
* See Appendix III. 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 3 5 

property in charge, as Trustees, for the benefit 
of some person or persons to whom it is to 
be dehvered upon their death ; and the position, 
explained in clear terms, would hardly seem 
a covetable one. What would be the probable 
feelings of a youth, on his entrance into life, to 
whom the career hoped for him was proposed 
in terms such as these : " You must work 
unremittingly, and with your utmost intelli- 
gence, during all your available years, you will 
thus accumulate wealth to a large amount ; but 
you must touch none of it, beyond what is 
needful for your support. Whatever sums you 
gain, beyond those required for your decent 
and moderate maintenance, and whatever 
beautiful things you may obtain possession of, 
shall be properly taken care of by servants, 
for whose maintenance you will be charged, 
and whom you will have the trouble of super- 
intending, and on your death-bed you shall 
have the power of determining to whom the 
accumulated property shall belong, or to what 
purposes be applied " ? 

38. The labour of life, under such condi- 
tions, would probably be neither zealous nor 
cheerful ; yet the only difference between this 



36 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

position and that of the ordinary capitahst is 
the power which the latter supposes himself 
to possess, and which is attributed to him by 
others, of spending his money at any moment. 
This pleasure, taken in the iviagination of power 
to part with that zvith which we have no intention 
of partings is one of the most curious, though 
commonest forms of the Eidolon, or Phantasm 
of Wealth. But the political economist has 
nothing to do with this idealism, and looks 
only to the practical issue of it — namely, that 
the holder of wealth, in such temper, may be 
regarded simply as a mechanical means of 
collection ; or as a money-chest with a slit in 
it, not only receptant but suctional, set in 
the public thoroughfare ; — chest of which only 
Death has the key, and evil Chance the dis- 
tribution of the contents. In his function of 
Lender (which, however, is one of administra- 
tion, not use, as far as he is himself concerned), 
the capitalist takes, indeed, a more interesting 
aspect; but even in that function, his rela- 
tions with the State are apt to degenerate into 
a mechanism for the convenient contraction 
of debt; — a function the more mischievous, 
because a nation invariably appeases its 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 3/ 

conscience with respect to an unjustifiable 
expense, by meeting it with borrowed funds, 
expresses its repentance of a fooHsh piece 
of business, by letting its tradesmen wait for 
their money, and always leaves its descendants 
to pay for the work which will be of the least 
advantage to them.* 

39. Quit of these three sources of miscon- 
ception, the reader will have little farther 
difficulty in apprehending the real nature of 
Effectual value. He may, however, at first 
not without surprise, perceive the conse- 
quences involved in his acceptance of the 
definition. For if the actual existence of 
wealth be dependent on the power of its 
possessor, it follows that the sum of wealth 
held by the nation, instead of being constant 
or calculable, varies hourly, nay, momentarily, 
with the number and character of its holders ! 
and that in changing hands, it changes in 
quantity. And farther, since the worth of the 
currency is proportioned to the sum of material 

[* I would beg the reader's very close attention to these 
37th and 38th paragraphs. It would be well if a dogged 
conviction could be enforced on nations, as on individuals, 
that, with few exceptions, what they cannot at present pay 
for, they should not at present have.] 



38 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

wealth which it represents, if the sum of the 
wealth changes, the worth of the currency 
changes. And thus both the sum of the 
property, and power of the currency, of the 
State, vary momentarily as the character and 
number of the holders. And not only so, but 
different rates and kinds of variation are caused 
by the character of the holders of different 
kinds of wealth. The transitions of value 
caused by the character of the holders of land 
differ in mode from those caused by character 
in holders of works of art; and these again 
from those caused by character in holders 
of machinery or other working capital. But 
we cannot examine these special phenomena 
of any kind of wealth until we have a clear 
idea of the way in which true currency ex- 
presses them; and of the resulting modes in 
which the cost and price of any article are 
related to its value. To obtain this we must 
approach the subject in its first elements. 

40. Let us suppose a national store of 

wealth, composed of material things either 

useful, or believed to be so, taken charge of 

by the Government,* and that every workman, 

* See Appendix IV. 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 39 

having produced any article involving labour 
in its production, and for which he has no 
immediate use, brings it to add to this store, 
receiving from the Government, in exchange, 
an order either for the return of the thing 
itself, or of its equivalent in other things, such 
as he may choose out of the store, at any 
time when he needs them. The question of 
equivalence itself (how much wine a man is to 
receive in return for so much corn, or how 
much coal in return for so much iron) is a 
quite separate one, which we will examine 
presently. For the time, let it be assumed 
that this equivalence has been determined, and 
that the Government order, in exchange for a 
fixed weight of any article (called, suppose, d)y 
is either for the return of that weight of the 
article itself, or of another fixed weight of the 
article b, or another of the article c, and so on. 
Now, supposing that the labourer speedily 
and continually presents these general orders, 
or, in common language, '^ spends the money," 
he has neither changed the circumstances of 
the nation, nor his own, except in so far as 
he may have produced useful and consumed 
useless articles, or vice versa. But if he does 



40 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

not use, or uses in part only, the orders he 
receives, and lays aside some portion of them ; 
and thus every day bringing his contribution 
to the national store, lays by some per-centage 
of the orders received in exchange for it, he 
increases the national wealth daily b3^ as much 
as he does not use of the received order, and 
to the same amount accumulates a monetary 
claim on the Government. It is, of course, 
always in his power, as it is his legal right, 
to bring forward this accumulation of claim, 
and at once to consume, destroy, or distribute, 
the sum of his wealth. Supposing he never 
does so, but dies, leaving his claim to others, 
he has enriched the State during his life by 
the quantity of wealth over which that claim 
extends, or has, in other words, rendered so 
much additional life possible in the State, of 
which additional life he bequeaths the imme- 
diate possibility to those whom he invests with 
his claim. Supposing him to cancel the claim, 
he would distribute this possibility of life 
among the nation at large. 

41. We hitherto consider the Government 
itself as simply a conservative power, taking 
charge of the wealth entrusted to it. 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 4 I 

But a Government may be more or less than 
a conservative power. It may be either an 
improving, or destructive one. 

If it be an improving power, using all the 
wealth entrusted to it to the best advantage, 
the nation is enriched in root and branch at 
once, and the Government is enabled, for every 
order presented, to return a quantity of wealth 
greater than the order was written for, accord- 
ing to the fructification obtained in the interim. 
This ability may be either concealed, in which 
case the currency does not completely repre- 
sent the wealth of the country, or it may be 
manifested by the continual payment of the 
excess of value on each order, in which case 
there is (irrespectively, observe, of collateral 
results afterwards to be examined) a perpetual 
rise in the worth of the currency, that is to 
say, a fall in the price of all articles represented 
by it. 

42. But if the Government be destructive, 
or a consuming power, it becomes unable to 
return the value received on the presentation 
of the order. 

' This inability may either be concealed by 
meeting demands to the full, until it issue in 



42 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

bankruptcy, or in some form of national debt ; 
— or it may be concealed during oscillatory 
movements between destructiveness and pro- 
ductiveness, which result on the whole in 
stability; — ^^or it may be manifested by the 
consistent return of less than value received 
on each presented order, in which case there 
is a consistent fall in the worth of the currency, 
or rise in the price of the things represented 
by it. 

43. Now, if for this conception of a central 
Government, we substitute that of a body of 
persons occupied in industrial pursuits, of 
whom each adds in his private capacity to the 
common store, we at once obtain an approxi- 
mation to the actual condition of a civihzed 
mercantile community, from which approxi- 
mation we might easily proceed into still 
completer analysis. I purpose, however, to 
arrive at every result by the gradual expan- 
sion of the simpler conception ; but I wish the 
reader to observe, in the meantime, that both 
the social conditions thus supposed (and I 
will by anticipation say also, all possible social 
conditions), agree in two great points ; namely, 
in the primal importance of the supposed 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 43 

national store or stock, and in its destructi- 
bility or improveability by the holders of it. 

44. I. Observe that in both conditions, that 
of central Government-holding, and diffused 
private-holding, the quantity of stock is of 
the same national moment. In the one case, 
indeed, its amount may be known by exami- 
nation of the persons to whom it is confided ; 
in the other it cannot be known but by ex- 
posing the private affairs of every individual. 
But, known or unknown, its significance is the 
same under each condition. The riches of 
the nation consist in the abundance, and their 
wealth depends on the nature, of this store. 

45. II. In the second place, both conditions 
(and all other possible ones) agree in the 
destructibility or improveability of the store 
by its holders. Whether in private hands, or 
under Government charge, the national store 
may be daily consumed, or daily enlarged, by 
its possessors ; and while the currency remains 
apparently unaltered, the property it represents 
may diminish or increase. 

46. The first question, then, which we have 
to put under our simple conception of central 
Government, namely, '' What store has it ? " 



44 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

is one of equal importance, whatever may be 
the constitution of the State ; while the second 
question — namely, '^Who are the holders of 
the store ? " involves the discussion of the 
constitution of the State itself. 

The first inquiry resolves itself into three 
heads : 

1. What is the nature of the store ? 

2. What is its quantity in relation to the 
population ? 

3. What is its quantity in relation to the 
currency ? 

The second inquiry into two : 

1. Who are the Holders of the store, and in 
what proportions ? 

2. Who are the Claimants of the store (that 
is to say, the holders of the currency), and in 
what proportions ? 

We will examine the range of the first three 
questions in the present paper; of the two 
following, in the sequel. 

47. I. Question First. What is the nature 
of the store ? Has the nation hitherto worked 
for and gathered the right thing or the wrong ? 
On that issue rest the possibiHties of its life. 

For example, let us imagine a society, of no 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 45 

great extent, occupied in procuring and laying 
up .store of corn, wine, wool, silk, and other 
such preservable materials of food and cloth- 
ing; and that it has a currency representing 
them. Imagine farther, that on days of 
festivity, the society, discovering itself to 
derive satisfaction from pyrotechnics, gradually 
turns its attention more and more to the manu- 
facture of gunpowder; so that an increasing 
number of labourers, giving what time they 
can spare to this branch of industry, bring 
increasing quantities of combustibles into 
the store, and use the general orders received 
in exchange to obtain such wine, wool, or corn, 
as they may have need of. The currency 
remains the same, and represents precisely the 
same amount of material in the store, and of 
labour spent in producing it. But the corn 
and wine gradually vanish, and in their place, 
as gradually, appear sulphur and saltpetre, till 
at last the labourers who have consumed 
corn and suppHed nitre, presenting on a 
festal morning some of their currency to ob- 
tain materials for the feast, discover that no 
amount of currency will command anything 
Festive, except Fire. The supply of rockets 



46 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

is unlimited, but that of food, limited, in a 
quite final manner ; and the whole currency in 
the hands of the society represents an infinite 
power of detonation, but none of existence. 

48. -This statement, caricatured as it may 
seem, is only exaggerated in assuming the 
persistence of the folly to extremity, unchecked, 
as in reality it would be, by the gradual rise 
in price of food. But it falls short of the 
actual facts of human life in expression of the 
depth and intensity of the folly itself. For a 
great part (the reader would not beheve how 
great until he saw the statistics in detail) of 
the most earnest and ingenious industry of the 
world is spent in producing munitions of war; 
gathering, that is to say, the materials, not of 
festive, but of consuming fire ; filling its stores 
with all power of the instruments of pain, and 
all affluence of the ministries of death. It was 
no true Trionfo della Morte^ which men have 
seen and feared (sometimes scarcely feared) so 
long; wherein he brought them rest from 

[* I little thought, what Trionfo della Morte would be, 
for this very cause, and in literal fulfilment of the closing 
words of the 47th paragraph, over the fields and houses of 
Europe, and over its fairest city — within seven years from 
the day I wrote it.] 



11. STORE-KEEPTNG. 47 

their labours. We see, and share, another 
and higher form of his triumph now. Task- 
master, instead of Releaser, he rules the dust 
of the arena no less than of the tomb ; and, 
content once in the grave whither man went, 
to make his works to cease and his devices to 
vanish, — now, in the busy city and on the 
serviceable sea, makes his work to increase, 
and his devices to multiply. 

49. To this doubled loss, or negative power 
of labour, spent in producing means of destruc- 
tion, we have to add, in our estimate of the 
consequences of human folly, whatever more 
insidious waste of toil there is in production 
of unnecessary luxury. Such and such an 
occupation (it is said) supports so many 
labourers, because so many obtain wages in 
following it; but it is never considered that 
unless there be a supporting power in the 
product of the occupation, the wages given to 
one man are merely withdrawn from another. 
We cannot say of any trade that it maintains 
such and such a number of persons, unless we 
know how and where the money, now spent 
in the purchase of its produce, would have 
been spent, if that produce had not been 



48 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

manufactured. The purchasing funds truly 
support a number of people in making This; 
but (probably) leave unsupported an equal 
number who are making, or could have made 
That. The manufacturers of small watches 
thrive at Geneva ; — it is well ; — but where 
would the money spent on small watches 
have gone, had there been no small watches 
to buy ? 

50. If the so frequently uttered aphorism 
of mercantile economy — ^'Labour is Hmited 
by capital," were true, this question would be 
a definite one. But it is untrue ; and that 
widely. Out of a given quantity of funds for 
wages, more or less labour is to be had, 
according to the quantity of will with which 
we can inspire the workman ; and the true 
limit of labour is only in the limit of this 
moral stimulus of the will, and of the bodily 
power. In an ultimate, but entirely unpractical 
sense, labour is limited by capital, as it is by 
matter — that is to say, where there is no 
material, there can be no work, — but in the 
practical sense, labour is limited only by 
the great original capital of head, heart, and 
hand. Even in the most artificial relations 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 49 

of commerce, labour is to capital as fire to fuel : 
out of so much fuel, you can have -only so much 
fire ; but out of so much fuel you shall have so 
much fire, — not in proportion to the mass of 
combustible, but to the force of wind that fans 
and water that quenches ; and the appliance of 
both. And labour is furthered, as conflagra- 
tion is, not so much by added fuel, as by 
admitted air.* 

51. For which reasons, I had to insert, in 
§ 49, the qualifying '^ probably ; " for it can 
never be said positively that the purchase- 
money, or wages fund of any trade is with- 
drawn from some other trade. The object itself 
may be the stimulus of the production of the 
money which buys it ; that is to say, the work 
by which the purchaser obtained the means 
of buying it, would not have been done by him, 
unless he had wanted that particular thing. 
And the production of any article not intrinsi- 
cally (nor in the process of manufacture) 

[* The meaning of which is, that you may spend a great 
deal of money, and get very little work for it, and that 
little bad; but having good "air," or "spirit," to put life 
into it, with very little money, you may get a great deal 
of work, and all good ; which, observe, is an arithmetical, 
not at all a poetical or visionary circumstance.] 

D 



50 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

injurious, is useful, if the desire of it causes 
productive labour in other directions. 

52. In the national store, therefore, the 
presence of things intrinsically valueless does 
not imply an entirely correlative absence of 
things valuable. We cannot be certain that 
all the labour spent on vanity has been diverted 
from reality, and that for every bad thing 
produced, a precious thing has been lost. In 
great measure, the vain things represent the 
results of roused indolence; they have been 
carved, as toys, in extra time; and, if they 
had not been made, nothing else would have 
been made. Even to munitions of war this 
principle applies ; they partly represent the work 
of men who, if they had not made spears, would 
never have made pruning-hooks, and who are 
incapable of any activities but those of contest. 

53. Thus then, finally, the nature of the 
store has to be considered under two main 
lights ; the one, that of its immediate and 
actual utility; the other, that of the past 
national character which it signifies by its 
production, and future character which it 
must develope by its use. And the issue of 
this investigation will be to show us that 



II. STORE-KEEPING. ^ I 

Economy does not depend merely on prin- 
ciples of ''demand and supply/' but primarily 
on what is demanded, and what is supplied ; 
which I will beg of you to observe, and take 
to heart. 

54. II. Question Second.— What is the 

quantity of the store in relation to the popu- 
lation ? 

It follows from what has been already stated 
that the accurate form in which this question 
has to be put is — ''What quantity of each 
article composing the store exists in propor- 
tion to the real need for it by the popula- 
tion ? " But we shall for the time assume, 
in order to keep all our terms at the simplest, 
that the store is wholly composed of useful 
articles, and accurately proportioned to the 
several needs for them. 

Now it cannot be assumed, because the 
store is large in proportion to the number of 
the people, that the people must be in comfort ; 
nor because it is small, that they must be 
in distress. An active and economical race 
always produces more than it requires, and 
lives (if it is permitted to do so) in competence 



52 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

on the produce of its daily labour. The 
quantity of its store, great or small, is therefore 
in many respects indifferent to it, and cannot 
be inferred from its aspect. Similarly an in- 
active and wasteful population, which cannot 
live by its daily labour, but is dependent, 
partly or wholly, on consumption of its store, 
may be (by various difficulties, hereafter to be 
examined, in realizing or getting at such store) 
retained in a state of abject distress, though 
its possessions may be immense. But the 
results always involved in the magnitude of 
store are, the commercial power of the nation, 
its security, and its mental character. Its 
commercial power, in that according to the 
quantity of its store may be the extent of its 
dealings ; its security, in that according to the 
quantity of its store are its means of sudden 
exertion or sustained endurance ; and its cha- 
racter, in that certain conditions of civilization 
cannot be attained without permanent and 
continually accumulating store, of great in- 
trinsic value, and of peculiar nature.* 

55. Now, seeing that these three advantages 
arise from largeness of store in proportion to 

[* More especially, works of great art.] 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 53 

population, the question arises immediately, 
'' Given the store — is the nation enriched by 
diminution of its numbers ? Are a successful 
national speculation, and a pestilence, econo- 
mically the same thing ? " 

This is in part a sophistical question ; such 
as it would be to ask whether a man was 
richer when struck by disease which must 
limit his life within a predicable period, than 
he was when in health. He is enabled to 
enlarge his current expenses, and has for all 
purposes a larger sum at his immediate dis- 
posal (for, given the fortune, the shorter the 
life, the larger the annuity); yet no man 
considers himself richer because he is con- 
demned by his physician. 

56. The logical reply is that, since Wealth 
is by definition only the means of life, a nation 
cannot be enriched by its own mortality. Or 
in shorter words, the life is more than the 
meat; and existence itself, more wealth than 
the means of existence. Whence, of two 
nations who have equal store, the more 
numerous is to be considered the richer, pro- 
vided the type of the inhabitant be as high 
(for, though the relative bulk of their store 



54 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

be less, its relative efficiency, or the amount 
of effectual wealth, must be greater). But if 
the type of the population be deteriorated by 
increase of its numbers, we have evidence of 
poverty in its worst influence; and then, to 
determine whether the nation in its total may 
still be justifiably esteemed rich, we must set 
or weigh, the number of the poor against that 
of the rich. 

To effect which piece of scale-work, it is 
of course necessary to determine, first, who 
are poor and who are rich ; nor this only, 
but also how poor and how rich they are. 
Which will prove a curious thermometrical 
investigation ; for we shall have to do for gold 
and for silver, what we have done for quick- 
silver; — determine, namely, their freezing- 
point, their zero, their temperate and fever-heat 
points ; finally, their vaporescent point, at 
which riches, sometimes explosively, as lately 
in America, ''make to themselves wings:" — 
and correspondent^, the number of degrees 
belozv zero at which poverty, ceasing to brace 
with any wholesome cold, burns to the bone.* 

[ * The meaning of that, in plain English, is, that we 
must find out how far poverty and riches are good or bad 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 55 

57. For the performance of these operations, 
in the strictest sense scientific, we will first 
look to the existing so-called '' science " of 
Pohtical Economy; we will ask it to define 
for us the comparatively and superlatively 
rich, and the comparatively and superlatively 
poor; and on its own terms — if any terms it 
can pronounce — examine, in our prosperous 
England, how many rich and how many poor 
people there are; and whether the quantity 
and intensity of the poverty is indeed so 
overbalanced by the quantity and intensity 
of wealth, that we may permit ourselves a 
luxurious blindness to it, and call ourselves; 
complacently, a rich country. And if we find 
no clear definition in the existing science, we 
will endeavour for ourselves to fix the true 
degrees of the scale, and to apply them."^ 

for people, and what is the difference between being 
miserably poor — so as, perhaps, to be driven to crime, or 
to pass life in suffering — and being blessedly poor, in the 
sense meant in the Sermon on the Mount. For I suppose 
the people who believe that sermon, do not think (if they 
ever honestly ask themselves what they do think), either that 
Luke vi. 24 is a merely poetical exclamation, or that the 
Beatitude of Poverty has yet been attained in St. Martin's 
Lane and other back streets of London.] 

[* Large plans ! — Eight years are gone, and nothing 



56 MUNERA PULVERIS, 

58. III. Question Third. What is the 
quantity of the store in relation to the 
Currency ? 

We have seen that the real worth of the 
currency, so far as dependent on its relation 
to the magnitude of the store, may vary, 
within certain limits, without affecting its 
worth in exchange. The diminution or in- 
crease of the represented wealth may be un- 
perceived, and the currency may be taken 
either for more or less than it is truly worth. 
Usually it is taken for much more; and its 
power in exchange, or credit-power, is thus 
increased up to a given strain upon its relation 
to existing wealth. This credit-power is of 
chief importance in the thoughts, because most 
sharply present to the experience, of a mer- 
cantile community : but the conditions of its 
stability* and all other relations of the currency 

done yet. But I keep my purpose of making one day this 
balance, or want of balance, visible, in those so seldom used 
scales of Justice.] 

* These are nearly all briefly represented by the image 
used for the force of money by Dante, of mast and sail ; — 
Quali dal vento le gonfiate vele 
Caggiono avvolte, poi che I'alber fiacca 
Tal cadde a terra la fiera crudele. 
The image may be followed out, like all of Dante's, into 



II. STORE-KEEPING. ' 5 / 

to the material store are entirely simple in 
principle, if not in action. Far other than 
simple are the relations of the currency to the 
available labour which it also represents. For 
this relation is involved not only with that of 
the magnitude of the store to the number, but 
with that of the magnitude of the store to 
the mind, of the population. Its proportion 
to their number, and the resulting worth of 
currency, are calculable ; but its proportion to 
their will for labour is not. The worth of the 
piece of money which claims a given quantity 
of the store is, in exchange, less or greater 
according to the facihty of obtaining the same 
quantity of the same thing without having 
recourse to the store. In other words, it 

as close detail as the reader chooses. Thus the stress of 
the sail must be proportioned to the strength of the mast, 
and it is only in unforeseen danger that a skilful seaman 
ever carries all the canvas his spars will bear ; states of 
mercantile languor are like the flap of the sail in a calm ; 
of mercantile precaution, like taking in reefs ; and mercantile 
ruin is instant on the breaking of the mast. 

[I mean by credit-power, the general impression on the 
national mind that a sovereign, or any other coin, is worth 
so much bread and cheese — so much wine — so much horse 
and carriage — or so much fine art : it may be really worth, 
when tried, less or more than is thought : the thought of it is 
the credit-power.] 



5 O MUNERA PULVERIS. 

depends on the immediate Cost and Price of 
the thing. We must now, therefore, complete 
the definition of these terms. 

59. All cost and price are counted in Labour. 
We must know first, therefore, what is to be 
counted as Labour. 

I have already defined Labour to be the 
Contest of the life of man with an opposite. 
Literally, it is the quantity of " Lapse," loss, 
or failure of human life, caused by any effort. 
It is usually confused with effort itself, or the 
application of power (opera) ; but there is 
much effort which is merely a mode of re- 
creation, or of pleasure. The most beautiful 
actions of the human body, and the highest 
results of the human intelligence, are con- 
ditions, or achievements, of quite unlaborious, 
— nay, of recreative, — effort. But labour is 
the suffering in effort. It is the negative 
quantity, or quantity of de-feat, which has to 
be counted against every Feat, and of de-fect, 
which has to be counted against every Fact, 
or Deed of men. In brief, it is '' that quantity 
of our toil which we die in." 

We might, therefore, a priori, conjecture (as 
we shall ultimately find), that it cannot be 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 59 

bought, nor sold. Everything else is bought 
and sold for Labour, but Labour itself cannot 
be bought nor sold for anything, being price- 
less.* The idea that it is a commodity to be 
bought or sold, is the alpha and omega of 
Pohtico-Economic fallacy. 

60. This being the nature of labour, the 
** Cost " of anything is the quantity of labour 
necessary to obtain it ; — the quantity for which, 
or at which, it ''stands" (constat). It is 
literally the '' Constancy " of the thing ;— you 
shall win it — move it — come at it, for no less 
than this. 

Cost is measured and measurable (using the 
accurate Latin terms) only in "labor," not in 
" opera." f It does not matter how much zvork 



* The object of Political Economy is not to buy, nor to 
sell labour, but to spare it. Every attempt to buy or sell it 
is, in the outcome, ineffectual ; so far as successful, it is not 
sale, but Betrayal ; and the purchase -money is a part of that 
thirty pieces which bought, first the greatest of labours, and 
afterwards the burial-field of the Stranger ; for this purchase- 
money, being in its very smallness or vileness the exactly 
measured opposite of the "vilis annona amicorum," makes 
all men strangers to each other. 

t Cicero's distinction, "sordid! qusestus, quorum operse, 
non quorum artes emuntur," admirable in principle, is 
inaccurate in expression, because Cicero did -not practically 



60 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

a thing needs to produce it; it matters only 
how much distress. Generally the more the 
power it requires, the less the distress ; so 
that the noblest works of man cost less than 
the meanest. 

True labour, or spending of life, is either of 
the body, in fatigue or pain ; of the temper or 
heart (as in perseverance of search for things, 
— patience in waiting for them, — fortitude or 
degradation in suffering for them, and the 
like), or of the intellect. All these kinds of 
labour are supposed to be included in the 
general term, and the quantity of labour is then 
expressed by the time it lasts. So that a unit 
of labour is '^ an hour's work " or a day's work, 
as we may determine.* 

6i. Cost, Hke value, is both intrinsic and 

know how much operative dexterity is necessary in all the 
higher arts ; but the cost of this dexterity is incalculable. 
Be it great or small, the "cost" of the mere perfectness of 
touch in a hammer-stroke of Donatello's, or a pencil-touch of 
Correggio's, is inestimable by any ordinary arithmetic. 

[Old notes, these, more embarrassing, I now perceive, than 
elucidatory ; but right, and worth retaining.] 

* Only observe, as some labour is more destructive of life 
than other labour, the hour or day of the more destructive 
toil is supposed to include proportionate rest. Though men 
do not, or cannot, usually take such rest, except in death. 



11. — STORE-KEEPING. 6 I 

eflfectual. Intrinsic cost is that of getting the 
thing in the right way ; effectual cost is that of 
getting the thing in the way we set about it. 
But intrinsic cost cannot be made a subject of 
analytical investigation, being only partially 
discoverable, and that by long experience. 
Effectual cost is all that the poKtical economist 
can deal with ; that is to say, the cost of the 
thing under existing circumstances, and by 
known processes. 

Cost, being dependent much on appHcation 
of method, varies with the quantity of the thing 
wanted, and with the number of persons who 
work for it. It is easy to get a little of some 
things, but difficult to get much; it is impos- 
sible to get some things with few hands, but 
easy to get them with many. 

62. The cost and value of things, however 
difficult to determine accurately, are thus both 
dependent on ascertainable physical circum- 
stances.* 

* There is, therefore, observe, no such thing as cheapness 
(in the common use of that term), without some error or 
injustice. A thing is said to be cheap, not because it is 
common, but because it is supposed to be sold under its 
worth. Everything has its proper and true worth at any 
given time, in relation to everything else ; and at that worth 



62 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

But their price is dependent on the human 
will. 

Such and such a thing is demonstrably good 
for so much. And it may demonstrably be had 
for so much. 

should be bought and sold. If sold under it, it is cheap to 
the buyer by exactly so much as the seller loses, and no 
more. Putrid meat, at twopence a pound, is not " cheaper " 
ihan wholesome meat at sevenpence a pound ; it is probably 
much dearer ; but if, by watching your opportunity, you can 
get the wholesome meat for sixpence a pound, it is cheaper 
to you by a penny, which you have gained, and the seller 
has lost. The present rage for cheapness is either, there- 
fore, simply and literally a rage for badness of all commo- 
dities, or it is an attempt to find persons whose necessities 
will force them to let you have more than you should for 
your money. It is quite easy to produce such persons, and 
in large numbers ; for the more distress there is in a nation, 
the more cheapness of this sort you can obtain, and your 
boasted cheapness is thus merely a measure of the extent 
of your national distress. 

There is, indeed, a condition of apparent cheapness, which 
we have some right to be triumphant in ; namely, the real 
reduction in cost of articles by right application of labour. 
But in this case the article is only cheap with reference to its 
former price ; the so-called cheapness is only our expression 
for the sensation of contrast between its former and existing 
prices. So soon as the new methods of producing the article 
are established, it ceases to be esteemed either cheap or dear, 
at the new price, as at the old one, and is felt to be cheap 
only when accident enables it to be purchased beneath this 
new value. And it is no advantage to produce the article 
more easily, except as it enables you to multiply your 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 63 

But it remains questionable, and in all 
manner of ways questionable, whether I choose 
to give so much.* 

This choice is always a relative one. It is a 
choice to give a price for this, rather than for 

population. Cheapness of this kind is merely the discovery 
that more men can be maintained on the same ground; 
and the question how many you will maintain in proportion 
to your additional means, remains exactly in the same terms 
that it did before. 

A form of immediate cheapness results, however, in many 
cases, without distress, from the labour of a population where 
food is redundant, or where the labour by which the food is 
produced leaves much idle time on their hands, which may 
be applied to the production of "cheap" articles. 

All such phenomena indicate to the political economist 
places where the labour is unbalanced. In the first case, the 
just balance is to be effected by taking labourers from the 
spot where pressure exists, and sending them to that where 
food is redundant. In the second, the cheapness is a local 
accident, advantageous to the local purchaser, disadvantage- 
ous to the local producer. It is one of the first duties of 
commerce to extend the market, and thus give the local 
producer his full advantage. 

Cheapness caused by natural accidents of harvest, weather, 
etc., is always counterbalanced, in due time, by natural 
scarcity, similarly caused. It is the part of wise government, 
and healthy commerce, so to provide in times and places of 
plenty for times and places of dearth, as that there shall never 
be waste, nor famine. 

Cheapness caused by gluts of the market is merely a disease 
of clumsy and wanton commerce. 

* Price has been already defined (p. 10) to be the quantity 



64 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

that; — a resolution to have the thing, if getting 
it does not involve the loss of a better thing. 
Price depends, therefore, not only on the cost 
of the commodity itself, but on its relation to 
the cost of every other attainable thing. 

Farther. The pozver of choice is also a 
relative one. It depends not merely on our 
own estimate of the thing, but on everybody 
else's estimate ; therefore on the number and 
force of the will of the concurrent buyers, 
and on the existing quantity of the thing in 
proportion to that number and force. 

Hence the price of anything depends on 
four variables. 

(i.) Its cost. 

(2.) Its attainable quantity at that cost. 

(3.) The number and power of the persons 
who want it. 

(4.) The estimate they have formed of its 
desirableness. 

Its value only affects its price so far as it is 

of labour which the possessor of a thing is willing to take 
for it. It is best to consider the price to be that fixed by 
the possessor, because the possessor has absolute power of 
refusing sale, while the purchaser has no absolute power of 
compelling it ; but the effectual or market price is that at 
which their estimates coincide. 



II. — STORE-KEEPING. , 6$ 

contemplated in this estimate ; perhaps, there- 
fore, not at all. 

63. Now, in order to show the manner in 
which price is expressed in terms of a currency, 
we must assume these four quantities to be 
known, and '^the estimate of desirableness," 
commonly called the Demand, to be certain. 
We will take the number of persons at the 
lowest. Let A and B be two labourers who 
'demand," that is to say, have resolved to 
labour for, two articles, a and d. Their 
demand for these articles (if the reader likes 
better, he may say their need) is to be con- 
ceived as absolute, their existence depending 
on the getting these two things. Suppose, for 
instance, that they are bread and fuel, in a cold 
country, and let a represent the least quantity 
of bread, and d the least quantity of fuel, which 
will support a man's life for a day. Let a be 
producible by an hour's labour, but d only by 
two hours' labour. 

Then the cos^ of a is one hour, and of I? two 
(cost, by our definition, being expressible in 
terms of time). If, therefore, each man worked 
both for his corn and fuel, each would have to 
work three hours a day. But they divide the 



66 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

labour for its greater ease.* Then if A works 
three hours, he produces 3 a, which is one a 
more than both the men want. And if B works 
three hours, he produces only i^ by or half of 
b less than both want. But if A work three 
hours and B six, A has 3 a, and B has 3 
b, a maintenance in the right proportion for 
both for a day and a half; so that each might 
take half a day's rest. But as B has worked 
double time, the whole of this day's rest 
belongs in equity to him. Therefore the just 
exchange should be, A giving two a for one b, 
has one a and one b ; — maintenance for a day. 
B giving one b for two a, has two a and two 
b ; — maintenance for two days. 

But B cannot rest on the second day, or A 
would be left without the article which B pro- 
duces. Nor is there any means of making the 
exchange just, unless a third labourer is called 
in. Then one workman. A, produces a^ and 
two, B and C, produce b: — A, working three 
hours, has three a; — B, three hours, I J b ; — 



* This "greater ease" ought to be allowed for by a 
diminution in the times of the divided work ; but as the 
proportion of times would remain the same, I do not intro- 
duce this unnecessary complexity into the calculation. 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 6/ 

C, three hours, i^ d. B and C each give half 
of 3 for a, and all have their equal daily main- 
tenance for equal daily work. 

To carry the example a single step farther, 
let three articles, a, h, and c be needed. 

Let a need one hour's work, b two, and c 
four ; then the day's work must be seven hours, 
and one man in a day's work can make 7 ^, or 
3i b, or if c. 

Therefore one A works for a, producing 7 a; 
two B's work for b, producing J b ; four C's 
work for c^ producing 7 c. 

A has six a to spare, and gives two a for 
one by and four a for one c. Each B has 2\ b 
to spare, and gives \ b for one a, and two b 
for one c. 

Each C has f of ^ to spare, and gives \ c 
for one bj and \ oi c for one a. 

And all have their day's maintenance. 

Generally, therefore, it follows that if the 
demand is constant,* the relative prices of 
things are as their costs, or as the quantities 
of labour involved in production.. 

64. Then, in order to express their prices in 
terms of a currency, we have only to put the 

* Compare Unto this Last, p. 115, et seq. 



68 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

currency into the form of orders for a certain 
quantity of any given article (with us it is in 
the form of orders for gold), and all quantities 
of other articles are priced by the relation 
they bear to the article which the currency 
claims. 

But the worth of the currency itself is not 
in the slightest degree founded more on the 
worth of the article which it either claims or 
consists in (as gold) than on the worth of 
every other article for which the gold is ex- 
changeable. It is just as accurate to say, '^so 
many pounds are worth an acre of land," as 
"an acre of land is worth so many pounds." 
The worth of gold, of land, of houses, and of 
food, and of all other things, depends at any 
moment on the existing quantities and relative 
demands for all and each ; and a change in the 
worth of, or demand for, any one, involves an 
instantaneously correspondent change in the 
worth of, and demand for, all the rest; — a 
change as inevitable and as accurately balanced 
(though often in its process as untraceable) as 
the change in volume of the outflowing river 
from some vast lake, caused by change in the 
volume of the inflowing streams, though no 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 69 

eye can trace, nor instrument detect, motion, 
either on its surface, or in the depth. 

65. Thus, then, the real working power or 
worth of the currency is founded on the entire 
sum of the relative estimates formed by the 
population of its possessions ; a change in this 
estimate in any direction (and therefore every 
change in the national character), instantly 
alters the value of money, in its second great 
function of commanding labour. But we 
must always carefully and sternly distinguish 
between this worth of currency, dependent on 
the conceived or appreciated value of what it 
represents, and the worth of it, dependent on 
the existence of what it represents. A currency 
is true or false^ in proportion to the security 
with which it gives claim to the possession of 
land, house, horse, or picture ; but a currency 
is strong or weak^"^ worth much or worth little, 
in proportion to the degree of estimate in 
which the nation holds the house, horse, or 
picture which is claimed. Thus the power of 

[* That is to say, the love of money is founded first on the 
intenseness of desire for given things ; a youth will rob the 
till, now-a-days, for pantomime tickets and cigars ; the 
"strength" of the currency being irresistible to him, in 
consequence of his desire for those luxuries.] 



70 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

the English currency has been, till of late, 
largely based on the national estimate of 
horses and of wine : so that a man might 
always give any price to furnish choicely 
his stable, or his cellar ; and receive public 
approval therefore : but if he gave the same 
sum to furnish his library, he was called mad, 
oi" a biblio-maniac. And although he might 
lose his fortune by his horses, and his health 
or life by his cellar, and rarely lost either by 
his books, he was yet never called a Hippo- 
maniac nor an Oino-maniac ; but only Biblio- 
maniac, because the current worth of money 
was understood to be legitimately founded on 
cattle and wine, but not on literature. The 
prices lately given at sales for pictures and 
MSS. indicate some tendency to change in the 
national character in this respect, so that the 
worth of the currency may even come in time 
to rest, in an acknowledged manner, somewhat 
on the state and keeping of the Bedford missal, 
as well as on the health of Caractacus or 
Blink Bonny ; and old pictures be considered 
property, no less than old port. They might 
have been so before now, but that it is more 
difficult to choose the one than the other. 



II. STORE-KEEPING. J I 

66. Now, observe, all these sources of 
variation in the power of the currency 
exist, wholly irrespective of the influences of 
vice, indolence, and improvidence. We have 
hitherto supposed, throughout the analysis, 
every professing labourer to labour honestly, 
heartily, and in harmony with his fellows. 
We have now to bring farther into the calcu- 
lation the effects of relative industry, honour, 
and forethought ; and thus to follow out the 
bearings of our second inquiry : Who are the 
holders of the Store and Currency, and in 
what proportions ? 

This, however, we must reserve for our next 
paper — noticing here only that, however dis- 
tinct the several branches of the subject are, 
radically, they are so interwoven in their 
issues that we cannot rightly treat any one, 
till we have taken cognizance of all. Thus the 
need of the currency in proportion to number 
of population is materially influenced by the 
probable number of the holders in proportion 
to the non-holders; and this again, by the 
number of holders of goods, or wealth, in pro- 
portion to the non-holders of goods. For as, 
by definition, the currency is a claim to goods 



72 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

which are not possessed, its quantity indicates 
the number of claimants in proportion to the 
number of holders ; and the force and com- 
plexity of claim. For if the claims be not 
complex, currency as a means of exchange 
may be very small in quantity. A sells some 
corn to B, receiving a promise from B to pay 
in cattle, which A then hands over to C, to get 
some wine. C in due time claims the cattle 
from B ; and B takes back his promise. 
These exchanges have, or might have been, 
all effected with a single coin or promise ; and 
the proportion of the currency to the store 
would in such circumstances indicate only the 
circulating vitality of it — that is to say, the 
quantity and convenient divisibility of that part 
of the store which the habits of the nation keep 
in circulation. If a cattle breeder is content 
to live with his household chiefly on meat and 
milk, and does not want rich furniture, or 
jewels, or books — if a wine and corn grower 
maintains himself and his men chiefly on 
grapes and bread ; — if the wives and daughters 
of famines weave and spin the clothing of the 
household, and the nation, as a whole, remains 
content with the produce of its own soil and 



II. STORE-KEEPING. 73 

the work of its own hands, it has Httle 
occasion for circulating media. It pledges and 
promises little and seldom; exchanges only 
so far as exchange is necessary for life. The 
store belongs to the people in whose hands it 
is found, and money is little needed either as 
an expression of right, or practical means of 
division and exchange. 

dj. But in proportion as the habits of the 
nation become complex and fantastic (and they 
may be both, without therefore being civilized), 
its circulating medium must increase in pro- 
portion to its store. If every one wants a 
little of everything, — if food must be of many 
kinds, and dress of many fashions, — if multi- 
tudes live by work which, ministering to fancy, 
has its pay measured by fancy, so that large 
prices will be given by one person for what 
is valueless to another, — if there are great 
inequalities of knowledge, causing great in- 
equahties of estimate, — and, finally, and worst 
of all, if the currency itself, from its largeness, 
and the power which the possession of it im- 
plies, becomes the sole object of desire with 
large numbers of the nation, so that the 
holding of it is disputed among- them as the 



74 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

main object of life : — in each and all of these 
cases, the currency necessarily enlarges in 
proportion to the store; and as a means of 
exchange and division, as a bond of right, and 
as an object of passion, has a more and more 
important and malignant power over the 
nation's dealings, character, and life. 

Against which power, when, as a bond of 
Right, it becomes too conspicuous and too 
burdensome, the popular voice is apt to be 
raised in a violent and irrational manner, 
leading to revolution instead of remedy. 
Whereas all possibility of Economy depends 
on the clear assertion and maintenance of this 
bond of right, however burdensome. The first 
necessity of all economical government is to 
secure the unquestioned and unquestionable 
working of the great law of Property — that a 
man who works for a thing shall be allowed 
to get it, keep it, and consume it, in peace; 
and that he who does not eat his cake to- 
day, shall be seen, without grudging, to have 
his cake to-morrow. This, I say, is the first 
point to be secured by social law; without 
this, no political advance, nay, no political 
existence, is in any sort possible. Whatever 



11. STORE-KEEPING. "J 5 

evil, luxury, iniquity, may seem to result from 
it, this is nevertheless the first of all Equities ; 
and to the enforcement of this, by law and 
police-truncheon, the nation must always 
primarily set its mind — that the cupboard door 
may have a firm lock to it, and no man's dinner 
be carried off by the mob, on its way home 
from the baker's. Which, thus fearlessly 
asserting, we shall endeavour in next paper 
to consider how far it may be practicable for 
the mob itself, also, in due breadth of dish, 
to have dinners to carry home. 



CHAPTER III. 



COIN-KEEPING. 



68. It will be seen by reference to the last 
chapter that our present task is to examine the 
relation of holders of store to holders of cur- 
rency ; and of both to those who hold neither. 
In order to do this, we must determine on 
which side we are to place substances such as 
gold, commonly known as bases of currency. 
By aid of previous definitions the reader will 
now be able to understand closer statements 
than have yet been possible. 

69. The currency of any country consists of 
every document acknowledging debtj which is 
transferable in the country* 

This transferableness depends upon its 
intelligibility and credit. Its intelligibility 

[* Remember this definition : it is of great importance as 

opposed to the imperfect ones usually given. When first 

these essays were published, I remember one of their 
76 



III. COIN-KEEPING. // 

depends chiefly on the difficulty of forging 
anything like it ; — its credit much on national 
character, but ultimately always on the existence 
of substantial means of meeting its demand.^ 

As the degrees of transferableness are 
variable, (some documents passing only in 
certain places, and others passing, if at all, 
for less than their inscribed value,) both the 
mass, and, so to speak, fluidity, of the 
currency, are variable. True or perfect 
currency flows freely, like a pure stream; it 
becomes sluggish or stagnant in proportion to 
the quantity of less transferable matter which 
mixes with it, adding to its bulk, but dimin- 
ishing its purity. [Articles of commercial 
value, on which bills are drawn, increase 
the currency indefinitely; and substances of 
intrinsic value, if stamped or signed without 
restriction so as to become acknowledgments 
of debt, increase it indefinitely also.] Every 

reviewers asking contemptuously, " Is half- a- crown a 
document ? " it never having before occurred to him that 
a document might be stamped as well as written, and 
stamped on silver as well as on parchment.] 

[* I do not mean the demand of the holder of a five-pound 
note for five pounds, but the demand of the holder' of a 
pound for a pound's worth of something good.] 



78 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

bit of gold found in Australia, so long as it 
remains uncoined, is an article offered for sale 
like any other ; but as soon as it is coined into 
pounds, it diminishes the value of every pound 
we have now in our pockets. 

70. Legally authorized or national currency, 
in its perfect condition, is a form of public 
acknowledgment of debt, so regulated and 
divided that any person presenting a com- 
modity of tried worth in the public market, 
shall, if he please, receive in exchange for it 
a document giving him claim to the return of 
its equivalent, (i) in any place, (2) at any 
time, and (3) in any kind. 

When currency is quite healthy and vital, 
the persons entrusted with its management 
are always able to give on demand either, 

A. The assigning document for the as- 
signed quantity of goods. Or, 

B. The assigned quantity of goods for 
the assigning document. 

If they cannot give document for goods, the 
national exchange is at fault. 

If they cannot give goods for document, the 
national credit is at fault. 

The nature and power of the document are 



III. COIN-KEEPING. jg 

therefore to be examined under the three 
relations it bears to Place, Time, and Kind. 

71. ( I.) It gives claim to the return of 
equivalent wealth in any Place. Its use in 
this function is to save carriage, so that 
parting with a bushel of corn in London, we 
may receive an order for a bushel of corn at 
the Antipodes, or elsewhere. To be perfect 
in this use, the substance of currency must 
be to the maximum portable, credible, and 
intelligible. Its non-acceptance or discredit 
results always from some form of ignorance 
or dishonour: so far as such interruptions 
rise out of differences in denomination, there 
is no ground for their continuance among 
civilized nations. It may be convenient in 
one country to use chiefly copper for coinage, 
in another silver, and in another gold, — 
reckoning accordingly in centimes, francs,- or 
zecchins : but that a franc should be different 
in weight and value from a shilhng, and a 
zwanziger vary from both, is wanton loss of 
commercial power. 

72. (2.) It gives claim to the return of 
equivalent wealth at any Time. In this second 
use, currency is the exponent of accumulation : 



8o MUNERA PULVERIS. 

it renders the laying-up of store at the com- 
mand of individuals imHmitedly possible; — 
whereas, but for its intervention, all gathering 
would be confined within certain limits by the 
bulk of property, or by its decay, or the 
difficulty of its guardianship. '^I will pull 
down my barns and build greater," cannot be 
a daily saying; and all material investment 
is enlargement of care. The national currency 
transfers , the guardianship of the store to 
many ; and preserves to the original producer 
the right of re-entering on its possession at 
any future period. 

73. (3.) It gives claim (practical, though 
not legal) to the return of equivalent wealth 
in any Kind. It is a transferable right, not 
merely to this or that, but to anything; and 
its power in this function is proportioned to 
the range of choice. If you give a child an 
apple or a toy, you give him a determinate 
pleasure, but if you give him a penny, an 
indeterminate one, proportioned to the range 
of selection offered by the shops in the village. 
The power of the world's currency is similarly 
in proportion to the openness of the world's 
fair, and, commonly, enhanced by the brilliancy 



III. — COIN-KEEPING. 8 I 

of external aspect, rather than soHdity, of its 
wares. 

74. We have said that the currency consists 
of orders for equivalent goods. If equivalent, 
their quality must be guaranteed. The kinds 
of goods chosen for specific claim must, 
therefore, be capable of test, while, also, that 
a store may be kept in hand to meet the 
call of the currency, smallness of bulk, with 
great relative value, is desirable; and inde- 
structibiHty, over at least a certain period, 
essential. 

Such indestructibility, and facihty of being 
tested, are united in gold; its intrinsic value 
is great, and its imaginary value greater; so 
that, partly through indolence, partly through 
necessity and want of organization, most 
nations have agreed to take gold for the only 
basis of their currencies ; — with this grave dis- 
advantage, that its portability enabling the 
metal to become an active part of the medium 
of exchange, the stream of the currency itself 
becomes opaque with gold— half currency and 
half commodity, in unison of functions which 
partly neutralize, partly enhance, each other's 
force. 

F 



82 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

75. They partly neutralize, since in so far 
as the gold is commodity, it is bad currency, 
because liable to sale ; and in so far as it is 
currency, it is bad commodity, because its 
exchange value interferes with its practical 
use. Especially its employment in the higher 
branches of the arts becomes unsafe on account 
of its liability to be melted down for exchange. 

Again. They partly enhance, since in so 
far as the gold has acknowledged intrinsic 
value, it is good currency, because everywhere 
acceptable; and in so far as it has legal ex- 
changeable value, its worth as a commodity 
is increased. We want no gold in the form 
of dust or crystal ; but we seek for it coined, 
because in that form it will pay baker and 
butcher. And this worth in exchange not 
only absorbs a large quantity in that use,* 

* [Read and think over, the following note very care- 
fully.] 

The waste of labour in obtaining the gold, though it 
cannot be estimated by help of any existing data, may be 
understood in its bearing on entire economy by supposing it 
limited to transactions between two persons. If two farmers 
in Australia have been exchanging corn and cattle with each 
other for years, keeping their accounts of reciprocal debt in 
any simple way, the sum of the possessions of either would 
not be diminished, though the part of it which was lent or 



III. COIN-KEEPING. 83 

but greatJy increases the effect on the imagina- 
tion of the quantity used in the arts. Thus, 
in brief, the force of the functions is increased, 
but their precision blunted, by their unison. 

^6. These inconveniences, however, attach 
to gold as a basis of currency on account of 
its portability and preciousness. But a far 
greater inconvenience attaches to it as the only 
legal basis of currency. Imagine gold to be 
only attainable in masses weighing several 
pounds each, and its value, like that of mala- 
chite or marble, proportioned to its largeness 
of bulk ; — it could not then get itself confused 
with the currency in daily use, but it might 
still remain as its basis; and this second 
inconvenience would still affect it, namely, 
that its significance as an expression of debt 
varies, as that of every other article would, 
with the popular estimate of its desirableness, 

borrowed were only reckoned by marks on a stone, or 
notches on a tree ; and the one counted himself accordingly, 
so many scratches, or so many notches, better than the 
other. But it would soon be seriously diminished if, dis- 
covering gold in their fields, each resolved only to accept 
golden counters for a reckoning ; and ^.ccordingly, when- 
ever he wanted a sack of corn or a cow, was obliged to go 
and wash sand for a week before he could get the means of 
giving a receipt for them. 



84 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

and with the quantity offered in the market. 
My power of obtaining other goods for gold 
depends always on the strength of public 
passion for gold, and on the limitation of its 
quantity, so that when either of two things 
happens — that the world esteems gold less, or 
finds it more easily — my right of clai7n is in 
that degree effaced; and it has been even 
gravely maintained that a discovery of a 
mountain of gold would cancel the National 
Debt; in other words, that men may be paid 
for what costs much in what costs nothing. 
Now, it is true that there is little chance of 
sudden convulsion in this respect; the world 
will not so rapidly increase in wisdom as to 
despise gold on a sudden; and perhaps may 
[for a little time] desire it more eagerly the 
more easily it is obtained; nevertheless, the 
right of debt ought not to rest on a basis of 
imagination ; nor should the frame of a national 
currency vibrate with every miser's panic, and 
every merchant's imprudence. 

77. There are two methods of avoiding this 
insecurity, which would have been fallen upon 
long ago, if, instead of calculating the con- 
ditions of the supply of gold, men had only 



III. COIN-KEEPING. 8 5 

considered how the world might hve and 
manage its aftairs without gold at all.* One 
is, to base the cun-enc}- on substances of truer 
intrinsic value ; the other, to base it on several 
substances instead of one. If I can only 
claim gold, the discoveiw of a golden mountain 
starves me ; but if I can claim bread, the 
discovery of a continent of corn-fields need 
not trouble me. If, however, I wish to 
exchange m}'- bread for other things, a good 
harvest will for the time limit nn' power in 
this respect ; but if I can claim either bread, 
iron, or silk at pleasure, the standard of value 
has three feet instead of one, and will be pro- 
portionately firm. Thus, ultimately, the steadi- 
ness of currency depends upon the breadth 
of its base ; but the difficulty of organization 
increasing with this breadth, the discover}^ of 

* It is difficult to estimate the curious futility of discus- 
sions such as that which lately occupied a section of the 
British Association, on the absorption of gold, while no one 
can produce even the simplest of the data necessarj- for the 
inquiry. To take the first occurring one, — What means have 
we of ascertaining the weight of gold employed this year in 
the toilettes of the women of Europe (not to speak of Asia) ; 
and, supposing it known, what means of conjecturing the 
weight by which, next year, their fancies, and the changes 
of style among their jewellers, will diminish or increase it ? 



86 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

the condition at once safest and most conve- 
nient "^ can only be by long analysis, which 
must for the present be deferred. Gold or 
silver t may always be retained in limited 
use, as a luxury of coinage and questionless 
standard, of one weight and alloy among all 
nations, varying only in the die. The purity 
of coinage, when metallic, is closely indicative 
of the honesty of the system of revenue, and 
even of the general dignity of the State.J 

78. Whatever the article or articles may be 
which the national currency promises to pay, 
a premium on that article indicates bankruptcy 
of the government in that proportion, the 

""■ See, in Pope's epistle to Lord Bathurst, his sketch of 
the difficulties and uses of a currency literally "pecuniary" 
— (consisting of herds of cattle). 

" His Grace will game — to White's a bull be led," etc. 

t Perhaps both ; perhaps silver only. It may be found 
expedient ultimately to leave gold free for use in the arts. 
As a means of reckoning, the standard might be, and in 
some cases has already been, entirely ideal. — See Mill's 
Political Economy, book iii. chap. vii. at beginning. 

% The purity of the drachma and zecchin were not without 
significance of the state of intellect, art, and policy, both in 
Athens and Venice ; — a fact first impressed upon me ten 
years ago, when, in taking daguerreotypes at Venice, I found 
no purchaseable gold pure enough to gild them with, except 
that of the old Venetian zecchin. 



III. COIN-K^PING. 87 

division of its assets being restrained only 
by the remaining confidence of the holders of 
notes in the return of prosperity to the firm. 
Currencies of forced acceptance, or of unlimited 
issue, are merely various modes of disguising 
taxation, and delaying its pressure, until it is 
too late to interfere with the cause of pressure. 
To do away with the possibility of such dis- 
guise would have been among the first results 
of a true economical science, had any such 
existed ; but there have been too many motives 
for the concealment, so long as it could by any 
artifices be maintained, to permit hitherto even 
the founding of such a science. 

79. And indeed, it is only through evil 
conduct, wilfully persisted in, that there is any 
embarrassment, either in the theory or working 
of currency. No exchequer is ever embar- 
rassed, nor is any financial question difficult 
of solution, when people keep their practice 
honest, and their heads cool. But when 
governments lose all office of pilotage, pro- 
tection, or scrutiny; and live only in magni- 
ficence of authorized larceny, and polished 
mendicity; or when the people, choosing 
Speculation (the s usually redundant in the 



88 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

Spelling) instead of Toil, visit no dishonesty 
with chastisement, that each may with im- 
punity take his dishonest turn ; — there are no 
tricks of financial terminology that will save 
them ; all signature and mintage do but magnify 
the ruin they retard ; and even the riches that 
remain, stagnant or current, change only from 
the slime of Avernus to the sand of Phlegethon 
— gmckssLud at the embouchure ; — land fluently 
recommended by recent auctioneers as ^' eligible 
for building leases." 

80. Finally, then, the power of true currency 
is four-fold. 

(i.) Credit power. Its worth in exchange, 
dependent on public opinion of the stability 
and honesty of the issuer. 

(2.) Real worth. Supposing the gold, or 
whatever else the currency expressly promises, 
to be required from the issuer, for all his 
notes; and that the call cannot be met in 
full. Then the actual worth of the document 
would be, and its actual worth at any moment 
is, therefore to be defined as, what the division 
of the assets of the issuer would produce for it. 

(3.) The exchange power of its base. Grant- 
ing that we can get five pounds in gold for our 



III. COIN-KEEPING. 89 

note, it remains a question how much of other 
things we can get for five pounds in gold. 
The more of other things exist, and the less 
gold, the greater this power. 

(4.) The power over labour, exercised by 
the given quantity of the base, or of the things 
to be got for it. The question in this case is, 
how much work, and (question of questions !) 
whose work, is to be had for the food which 
five pounds will buy. This depends on the 
number of the population, on their gifts, and 
on their dispositions, with which, down to their 
slightest humours, and up to their strongest 
impulses, the power of the currency varies. 

81. Such being the main conditions of 
national currency, we proceed to examine those 
of the total currency, under the broad definition, 
" transferable acknowledgment of debt ; " * 

* Under which term, observe, we include all documents 
of debt which, being honest, might be transferable, though 
they practically are not transferred ; while we exclude all 
documents which are in reality worthless, though in fact 
transferred temporarily, as bad money is. The document of 
honest debt, not transferred, is merely to paper currency 
as gold withdrawn from circulation is to that of bullion. 
Much confusion has crept into the reasoning on this sub- 
ject from the idea that the withdrawal from circulation 
is a definable state, whereas it is a graduated state, and 



90 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

among the many forms of which there are in 
effect only two, distinctly opposed; namely, 
the acknowledgments of debts which will be 
paid, and of debts which will not. Documents, 
whether in whole or part, of bad debt, being to 
those of good debt as bad money to bullion, we 
put for the present these forms of imposture 
aside (as in analysing a metal we should wash 
it clear of dross), and then range, in their exact 

indefinable. The sovereign in my pocket is withdrawn 
from circulation as long as I choose to keep it there. It is 
no otherwise withdrawn if I bury it, nor even if I choose 
to make it, and others, into a golden cup, and drink out of 
them ; since a rise in the price of the wine, or of other things, 
may at any time cause me to melt the cup and throw it 
back into currency ; and the bullion operates on the prices 
of the things in the market as directly, though not as 
forcibly, while it is in the form of a cup as it does in the 
form of a sovereign. No calculation can be founded on my 
humour in either case. If I like to handle rouleaus, and 
therefore keep a quantity of gold, to play with, in the form 
of jointed basaltic columns, it is all one in its effect on the 
market as if I kept it in the form of twisted filigree, or, 
steadily "amicus lamnse," beat the narrow gold pieces into 
broad ones, and dined off them. The probability is greater 
that I break the rouleau than that I melt the plate ; but 
the increased probability is not calculable. Thus, docu- 
ments are only withdrawn from the currency when cancelled, 
and bullion when it is so effectually lost as that the 
probability of finding it is no greater than of finding new 
gold in the mine. 



III. COIN-KEEPING. 9 I 

quantities, the true currency of the country on 
one side, and the store or property of the 
country on the other. We place gold, and all 
such substances, on the side of documents, as 
far as they operate by signature ; — on the side 
of store as far as they operate by value. Then 
the currency represents the quantity of debt 
in the country, and the store the quantity of its 
possession. The ownership of all the property 
is divided between the holders of currency and 
holders of store, and whatever the claiming 
value of the currency is at any moment, that 
value is to be deducted from the riches of the 
store-holders. 

82. Farther, as true currency represents b}^ 
definition debts which will be paid, it repre- 
sents either the debtor's wealth, or his ability 
and willingness ; that is to say, either wealth 
existing in his hands transferred to him by 
the creditor, or wealth which, as he is at some 
time surely to return it, he is either increasing, 
or, if diminishing, has the will and strength 
to reproduce. A sound currency therefore, as 
by its increase it represents enlarging debt, 
represents also enlarging means ; but in this 
curious way, that a certain quantity of it marks 



92 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

the deficiency of the wealth of the country from 
what it would have been if that currency had 
not existed.* In this respect it is like the 
detritus of a mountain; assume that it lies 
at a fixed angle, and the more the detritus, the 
larger must be the mountain ; but it would 
have been larger still, had there been none. 

83. Farther, though, as above stated, every 
man possessing money has usually also some 
property beyond what is necessary for his 
immediate wants, and men possessing property 
usually also hold currency beyond what is 
necessary for their immediate exchanges, it 

* For example, suppose an active peasant, having got his 
ground into good order and built himself a comfortable house, 
finding time still on his hands, sees one of his neighbours 
little able to work, and ill-lodged, and offers to build him 
also a house, and to put his land in order, on condition of 
receiving for a given period rent for the building and tithe 
of the fruits. The offer is accepted, and a document given 
promissory of rent and tithe. This note is money. It can 
only be good money if the man who has incurred the debt so 
far recovers his strength as to be able to take advantage of 
the help he has received, and meet the demand of the note ; 
if he lets his house fall to ruin, and his field to waste, his 
promissory note will soon be valueless : but the existence of 
the note at all is a consequence of his not having worked so 
stoutly as the other. Let him gain as much as to be able to 
pay back the entire debt ; the note is cancelled, and we have 
two rich store-holders and no currency. 



III. COIN-KEEPING. 93 

mainly determines the class to which they 
belong, whether in their eyes the money is an 
adjunct of the property, or the property of the 
money. In the first case the holder's pleasure 
is in his possessions, and in his money sub- 
ordinately, as the means of bettering or adding 
to them. In the second, his pleasure is in his 
money, and in his possessions only as repre- 
senting it. (In the first case the money is as 
an atmosphere surrounding the wealth, rising 
from it and raining back upon it; but in the 
second, it is as a deluge, with the wealth float- 
ing, and for the most part perishing in it.*) 
The shortest distinction between the men is 
that the one wishes always to buy, and the 
other to sell. 

84. Such being the great relations of the 
classes, their several characters are of the 
highest importance to the nation; for on the 
character of the .store-holders chiefly depend 
the preservation, display, and serviceableness 
of its wealth ; on that of the currencj^-holders, 



[* You need not trouble yourself to make out the sentence 
in parenthesis, unless you like, but do not think it is mere 
metaphor. It states a fact which I could not have stated so 
shortly, but by metaphor.] 



94 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

its distribution ; on that of both, its repro- 
duction. 

We shall, therefore, ultimately find it to be 
of incomparably greater importance to the 
nation in whose hands the thing is put, than 
how much of it is got ; and that the character 
of the holders may be conjectured by the 
quality of the store ; for such and such a man 
always asks for such and such a thing; nor 
only asks for it, but if it can be bettered, 
betters it : so that possession and possessor 
reciprocally act on each other, through the 
entire sum of national possession. The base 
nation, asking for base things, sinks dail}'' to 
deeper vileness of nature and weakness in 
use ; while the noble nation, asking for noble 
things, rises daily into diviner eminence in 
both ; the tendency to degradation being surely 
marked by " araPia ; " that is to say, (ex- 
panding the Greek thought,) by carelessness 
as to the hands in which things are put, 
consequent dispute for the acquisition of them, 
disorderliness in accumulation of them, in- 
accuracy in estimate of them, and bluntness 
in conception as to the entire nature of pos- 
session. 



III. — COIN-KEEPING. 95 

85. The currency-holders always increase 
in number and influence in proportion to the 
bluntness of nature and clumsiness of the 
store-holders; for the less use people can 
make of things, the more they want of them, 
and the sooner weary of them, and want 
to change them for something else; and all 
frequency of change increases the quantity 
and power of currency. The large currency- 
holder himself is essentially a person who 
never has been able to make up his mind as 
to what he will have, and proceeds, therefore, 
in vague collection and aggregation, with more 
and more infuriate passion, urged by com- 
placency in progress, vacancy in idea, and 
pride of conquest. 

While, however, there is this obscurity in 
the nature of possession of currency, there is a 
charm in the seclusion of it, which is to some 
people very enticing. In the enjoyment of 
real property, others must partly share. The 
groom has some enjoyment of the stud, and 
the gardener of the garden ; but the money is, 
or seems, shut up; it is wholly enviable. No 
one else can have part in any complacencies 
arising from it. 



g6 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

The power of arithmetical comparison is 
also a great thing to unimaginative people. 
They know always they are so much better 
than they were, in money; so much better 
than others, in money ; but wit cannot be so 
compared, nor character. My neighbour can- 
not be convinced that I am wiser than he is, 
but he can, that I am worth so much more; 
and the universality of the conviction is no 
less flattering than its clearness. Only a few 
can understand, — none measure — and few will 
willingly adore, superiorities in other things; 
but everybody can understand money, every- 
body can count it, and most will worship it. 

86. Now, these various temptations to 
accumulation would be politically harmless 
if what was vainly accumulated had any fair 
chance of being wisely spent. For as accu- 
mulation cannot go on for ever, but must 
some day end in its reverse — if this reverse 
were indeed a beneficial distribution and use, 
as irrigation from reservoir, the fever of 
gathering, though perilous to the gatherer, 
might be serviceable to the community. But 
it constantly happens (so constantly, that it 
may be stated as a political law having few 



III. COIN-KEEPING. 9/ 

exceptions), that what is unreasonably gathered 
is also unreasonably spent by the persons into 
whose hands it finally falls. Very frequently 
it is spent in war, or else in a stupefying luxury, 
twice hurtful, both in being indulged by the 
rich and witnessed by the poor. So that the 
iital tener and inal dare are as correlative as 
complementary colours; and the circulation of 
wealth, which ought to be soft, steady, strong, 
far-sweeping, and full of warmth, like the Gulf 
stream, being narrowed into an eddy, and 
concentrated on a point, changes into the 
alternate suction and surrender of Charybdis. 
Which is indeed, I doubt not, the true mean- 
ing of that marvellous fable, ^Mnfinite,'' as 
Bacon said of it, '^in matter of meditation." * 

87. It is a strange habit of wise humanity 
to speak in enigmas only, so that the highest 
truths and use fullest laws must be hunted 
for through whole picture-galleries of dreams, 
which to the vulgar seem dreams only. Thus 
Homer, the Greek tragedians, Plato, Dante, 

[* What follows, to the end of the chapter, was a note 
only, in the first printing ; but for after service, it is of more 
value than any other part of the book, so I have put it into 
the main text.^ 

G 



98 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Goethe, have hidden 
all that is chiefly serviceable in their work, 
and in all the various literature they absorbed 
and re-embodied, under types which have 
rendered it quite useless to the multitude. 
What is worse, the two primal declarers of 
moral discovery, Homer and Plato, are partly 
at issue; for Plato's logical power quenched 
his imagination, and he became incapable of 
understanding the purely imaginative element 
either in poetry or painting: he therefore 
somewhat overrates the pure discipline of 
passionate art in song and music, and misses 
that of meditative art. There is, however, a 
deeper reason for his distrust of Homer. His 
love of justice, and reverently religious nature, 
made him dread, as death, every form of 
fallacy ; but chiefly, fallacy respecting the 
world to come (his own myths being only 
symbolic exponents of a rational hope). We 
shall perhaps now every day discover more 
clearly how right Plato was in this, and feel 
ourselves more and more wonderstruck that 
men such as Homer and Dante (and, in an 
inferior sphere, Milton), not to speak of the 
great sculptors and painters of every age, have 



III. COIN-KEEPING. 99 

permitted themselves, though full of all noble- 
ness and wisdom, to coin idle imaginations of 
the mysteries of eternity, and guide the faiths 
of the families of the earth by the courses of 
their own vague and visionary arts : while the 
indisputable truths of human life and duty, 
respecting which they all have but one voice, 
lie hidden behind these veils of phantasy, 
unsought, and often unsuspected. I will 
gather carefully, out of Dante and Komer, 
what, in this kind, bears on our subject, in its 
due place; the first broad intention of their 
symbols may be sketched at once. 

88. The rewards of a worthy use of riches, 
subordinate to other ends, are shown by Dante 
in the fifth and sixth orbs of Paradise ; for the 
punishment of their unworthy use, three places 
are assigned; one for the avaricious and 
prodigal whose souls are lost {Hell, canto 7) ; 
one for the avaricious and prodigal whose 
souls are capable of purification (Purgatory, 
canto 19); and one for the usurers, of whom 
none can be redeemed (Hell, canto 17). The 
first group, the largest in all hell ('* gente piu 
che altrove troppa," compare Virgil's ''quae 
maxima turba"), meet in contrary currents. 



L cT 



lOO MUNERA PULVERIS. 

as the waves of Charybdis^ casting weights at 
each other from opposite sides. This weari- 
ness of contention is the chief element of their 
torture; so marked by the beautiful lines 
beginning ^* Or puoi, figliuol," etc. : (but the 
usurers, who made their money inactively, sit 
on the sand, equally without rest, however. 
" Di qua, di la, soccorrien," etc.) For it is not 
avarice, but contention for riches, leading to 
this double misuse of them, which, in Dante's 
light, is the unredeemable sin. The place of 
its punishment is guarded by Plutus, ^'the 
great enemy," and *'la fiera crudele," a spirit 
quite different from the Greek Plutus, who, 
though old and blind, is not cruel, and is 
curable, so as to become far-sighted. {pv 
Tv^\o^ aXy o^v fiXiTTcov. — Plato's epithets in 
first book of the Laws.) Still more does this 
Dantesque type differ from the resplendent 
Plutus of Goethe in the second part of Faust, 
who is the personified power of wealth for 
good or evil — not the passion for wealth ; and 
again from the Plutus of Spenser, who is the 
passion of mere aggregation. Dante's Plutus 
is specially and definitely the Spirit of Con- 
tention and Competition, or Evil Commerce; 



III. — COIN-KEEPING. lOI 

because, as I showed before, this kind of com- 
merce '^ makes all men strangers ; " his speech 
is therefore unintelligible, and no single soul 
of all those ruined by him has recognizable 
features. 

On the other hand, the redeemable sins of 
avarice and prodigahty are, in Dante's sight, 
those which are without dehberate or calcu- 
lated operation. The lust, or lavishness, of 
riches can be purged, so long as there has 
been no servile consistency of dispute and 
competition for them. The sin is spoken of as 
that of degradation by the love of earth ; it 
is purified by deeper humiliation — the souls 
crawl on their bellies ; their chant is, ''my 
soul cleaveth unto the dust." But the spirits 
thus condemned are all recognizable, and even 
the worst examples of the thirst for gold, 
which they are compelled to tell the histories 
of during the night, are of men swept by the 
passion of avarice into violent crime, but not 
sold to its steady work. 

89. The precept given to each of these 
spirits for its deliverance is — Turn thine eyes 
to the lucre (lure) which the Eternal King 
rolls with the mighty wheels. Otherwise, 



I02 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

the wheels of the " Greater Fortune," of which 
the constellation is ascending when Dante's 
dream begins. Compare George Herbert — 

" Lift up thy head ; 
Take stars for money ; stars, not to be told 
By any art, yet to be purchased." 

And Plato's notable sentence in the third book 
of the Polity : — ''Tell them they have divine 
gold and silver in their souls for ever; that 
they need no money stamped of men — neither 
may they otherwise than impiously mingle 
the gathering of the divine with the mortal 
treasure, for through that which the law of the 
niultit2Lde has coined^ e^idless crimes have been 
done and suffered ; but in theirs is fieither 
pollution nor sorroiv." 

90. At the entrance of this place of punish- 
ment an evil spirit is seen by Dante, quite 
other than the ''Gran Nemico." The great 
enemy is obeyed knowingly and willingly ; but 
the spirit — feminine — and called a Siren — is 
the *^ Deceitfulness of riches," aTrdrr] irXovrov 
of the Gospels, winning obedience by guile. 
This is the Idol of riches, made doubly 
phantasmal by Dante's seeing her in a dream. 
She is lovely to look upon, and enchants by 



III. COIN-KEEPING, IO3 

her sweet singing, but her womb is loathsome. 
Now, Dante does not call her one of the Sirens 
carelessly, any more than he speaks of 
Charybdis carelessly; and though he had got 
at the meaning of Homeric fable only through 
Virgil's obscure tradition of it, the clue he has 
given us is quite enough. Bacon's interpre- 
tation, *' the Sirens, or pleasures, ^^ which has 
become universal since his time, is opposed 
alike to Plato's meaning and Homer's. The 
Sirens are not pleasures, but Desires : in the 
Odyssey they are the phantoms of vain desire; 
but in Plato's Vision of Destiny, phantoms of 
divine desire ; singing each a different note on 
the circles of the distaff of Necessity, but 
forming one harmony, to which the three great 
Fates put words. Dante, however, adopted 
the Homeric conception of them, which was 
that they were demons of the Imagination, 
not carnal; (desire of the eyes; not lust of 
the flesh;) therefore said to be daughters of 
the Muses. Yet not of the Muses, heavenly 
or historical, but of the Muse of pleasure ; and 
they are at first winged, because even vain 
hope excites and helps when first formed ; but 
afterwards, contending for the possession of 



104 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

the imagination with the Muses themselves, 
they are deprived of their wings. 

91. And thus we are to distinguish the 
Siren power from the power of Circe, who is 
no -daughter of the Muses, but of the strong 
elements, Sun and Sea; her power is that 
of frank, and full vital pleasure, which, if 
governed and watched, nourishes men ; but, 
unwatched, and having no '^moly," bitterness 
or delay, mixed with it, turns men into beasts, 
but does not slay them, — leaves them, on the 
contrary, power of revival. She is herself 
indeed an Enchantress ; — pure Animal life ; 
transforming — or degrading — but always won- 
derful (she puts the stores on board the ship 
invisibly, and is gone again, like a ghost); 
even the wild beasts rejoice and are softened 
around her cave; the transforming poisons 
she gives to men are mixed with no rich 
feast, but with pure and right nourishment, — 
Pramnian wine, cheese, and flour; that is, 
wine, milk, and corn, the three great sustainers 
of life — it is their own fault if these make 
swine of them; (see Appendix V.) and swine 
are chosen merely as the type of consumption; 
as Plato's vcov 7r6\c<i, in the second book of 



III. COIN-KEEPING. IO5 

the Polity^ and perhaps chosen by Homer with 
a deeper knowledge of the Hkeness in variety 
of nourishment, and internal form of body. 

'^ Et quel est, s'il vous plait, cet audacieux 
animal qui se permet d'etre bati au dedans 
comme une johe petite fille ? 

^'Helas! chere enfant, j'ai honte de le 
nommer, et il ne faudra pas m'en vouloir. 
C'est . . . c'est le cochon. Ce n'est pas 
precisement flatteur pour vous ; mais nous en 
sommes tout la, et si cela vous contrarie par 
trop, il faut aller vous plaindre au bon Dieu 
qui a voulu que les choses fussent arrangees 
ainsi : seulement le cochon, qui ne pense qu'a 
manger, a I'estomac bien plus vaste que nous 
et c'est toujours une consolation." — Histoire 
dhine Bouchee de Pain, Lettre ix.) 

92. But the deadly Sirens are in all things 
opposed to the Circean power. They promise 
pleasure, but never give it. They nourish in 
no wise ; but slay by slow death. And where- 
as they corrupt the heart and the head, 
instead of merely betraying the senses, there 
is no recovery from their power ; they do not 
tear nor scratch, like Sc3dla, but the men who 
have listened to them are poisoned, and waste 



I06 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

away. Note that the Sirens' field is covered, 
not merely with the bones, but with the skinSy 
of those who have been consumed there. 
They address themselves, in the part of the 
song which Homer gives, not to the passions of 
Ulysses, but to his vanity, and the only man who 
ever came within hearing of them, and escaped 
untempted, was Orpheus, who silenced the vain 
imaginations by singing the praises of the gods. 
93. It is, then, one of these Sirens whom 
Dante takes as the phantasm or deceitfulness 
of riches; but note further, that she says it 
was her song that deceived Ulysses. Look 
back to Dante's account of Ulysses' death, and 
we find it was not the love of money, but 
pride of knowledge, that betrayed him ; whence 
we get the clue to Dante's complete meaning : 
that the souls whose love of wealth is pardon- 
able have been first deceived into pursuit of 
it by a dream of its higher uses, or by am- 
bition. His Siren is therefore the Philotime 
of Spenser, daughter of Mammon — 

" Whom all that folk with such contention 
Do flock about, my deare, my daughter is — 
Honour and dignitie from her alone 
Derived are." 



III. COIN-KEEPING. lO/ 

By comparing Spenser's entire account of 
this Philotime with Dante's of the Wealth- 
Siren, we shall get at the full meaning of both 
poets; but that of Homer lies hidden much 
more deeply. For his Sirens are indefinite; 
and they are desires of any evil thing ; power 
of wealth is not specially indicated by him, 
until, escaping the harmonious danger of ima- 
gination, Ulysses has to choose between two 
practical ways of life, indicated by the two 
rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. The monsters 
that haunt them are quite distinct from the 
rocks themselves, which, having many other 
subordinate significations, are in the main 
Labour and Idleness, or getting and spending ; 
each with its attendant monster, or betraying 
demon. The rock of gaining has its summit 
in the clouds, invisible, and not to be climbed ; 
that of spending is low, but marked by the 
cursed fig-tree, which has leaves, but no fruit. 
We know the type elsewhere; and there is a 
curious lateral allusion to it by Dante when 
Jacopo di Sant' Andrea, who had ruined him- 
self by profusion and committed suicide, 
scatters the leaves of the bush of Lotto degli 
Agli,, endeavouring to hide himself among 



I08 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

them. We shall hereafter examine the type 
completely; here I will only give an approxi- 
mate rendering of Homer's words, which have 
been obscured more by translation than even 
by tradition. 

94. ''They are overhanging rocks. The 
great waves of blue water break round them ; 
and the blessed Gods call them the Wanderers. 

'' By one of them no winged thing can pass 
— not even the wild doves that bring ambrosia 
to their father Jove — but the smooth rock 
seizes its sacrifice of them." (Not even 
ambrosia to be had without Labour. The 
word is peculiar — as a part of anything is 
offered for sacrifice ; especially used of heave- 
offering.) " It reaches the wide heaven with 
its top, and a dark-blue cloud rests on it, 
and never passes ; neither does the clear sky 
hold it, in summer nor in harvest. Nor can 
any man climb it^ — not if he had twenty feet 
and hands, for it is as smooth as though it 
were hewn. 

''And in the midst of it is a cave which is 
turned the way of hell. And therein dwells 
Scylla, whining for prey; her cry, indeed, is 
no louder than that of a newly-born whelp : 



III. COIN-KEEPING. lOQ 

but she herself is an awful thing — nor can any 
creature see her face and be glad ; no, though 
it were a god that rose against her. For she 
had twelve feet, all fore-feet, and six necks, 
and terrible heads on them; and each has 
three rows of teeth, full of black death. 

" But the opposite rock is lower than this, 
though but a bow-shot distant ; and upon it 
there is a great fig-tree, full of leaves; and 
under it the terrible Charybdis sucks down 
the black water. Thrice in the day she sucks 
it down, and thrice casts it up again ; be not 
thou there when she sucks down, for Neptune 
himself could not save thee." 

[Thus far went my rambling note, in 
Fr user's Magazine. The Editor sent me a 
compliment on it — of which I was very proud ; 
what the PubHsher thought of it, I am not 
informed; only I know that eventually he 
stopped the papers. I think a great deal of it 
myself, now, and have put it all in large print 
accordingly, and should like to write more ; 
but will, on the contrary, self-denyingly, and 
in gratitude to any reader who has got 
through so much, end my chapter.] 



CHAPTER IV. 



COMMERCE. 



95. As the currency conveys right of choice 
out of many things in exchange for one, 
so Commerce is the agency by which the 
power of choice is obtained ; so that countries 
producing only timber can obtain for their 
timber silk and gold ; or, naturally producing 
only jewels and frankincense, can obtain for 
them cattle and corn. In this function, com- 
merce is of more importance to a country in 
proportion to the limitations of its products, 
and the restlessness of its fancy ; — generally of 
greater importance towards Northern latitudes. 
96. Commerce is necessary, however, not 
only to exchange local products, but local 
skill. Labour requiring the agency of fire can 
only be given abundantly in cold^ countries ; 
labour requiring suppleness of body and sensi- 
tiveness of touch, only in warm ones ; labour 



IV. COMMERCE. Ill 

involving accurate vivacity of thought only in 
temperate ones ; while peculiar imaginative 
actions are produced by extremes of heat and 
cold, and of light and darkness. The pro- 
duction of great art is limited to climates warm 
enough to admit of repose in the open air, and 
cool enough to render such repose delightful. 
Minor variations in modes of skill distinguish 
every locality. The labour which at any place 
is easiest, is in that place cheapest; and it 
becomes often desirable that products raised 
in one country should be wrought in another. 
Hence have arisen discussions on ^'Inter- 
national values " which will be one day remem- 
bered as highly curious exercises of the human 
mind. For it will be discovered, in due course 
of tide and time, that international value is 
regulated just as inter-provincial or inter- 
parishional value is. Coals and hops are 
exchanged between Northumberland and Kent 
on absolutely the same principles as iron 
and wine between Lancashire and Spain. The 
greater breadth of an arm of the sea increases 
the cost, but does not modify the principle 
of exchange; and a bargain written in two 
languages will have no other economical results 



112 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

than a bargain written in one. The distances 
of nations are measured, not by seas, but by 
ignorances; and their divisions determined, 
not by dialects, but by enmities."^ 

97. Of course, a system of international 
values may always be constructed if we assume 
a relation of moral law to physical geography ; 
as, for instance, that it is right to cheat or 
rob across a river, though not across a road ; 
or across a sea, though not across a river, etc.; 
— again, a system of such values may be con- 
structed by assuming similar relations of taxa- 
tion to physical geography; as, for instance, 
that an article should be taxed in crossing a 
river, but not in crossing a road ; or in being 
carried fifty miles, but not in being carried 
five, etc. ; such positions are indeed not easily 
maintained when once put in logical form ; but 
one law of international value is maintainable 

[* I have repeated the substance of this and the next 
paragraph so often since, that I am ashamed and weary. 
The thing is too true, and too simple, it seems, for anybody 
ever to believe. Meantime, the theories of "international 
values," as explained by Modern Political Economy, have 
brought about last year's pillage of France by Germany, 
and the affectionate relations now existing in consequence 
between the inhabitants of the right and left banks of the 
Rhine.! 



IV. COMMERCE. I I 3 

in any form : namely, that the farther your 
neighbour lives from you, and the less he 
understands you, the more you are boimd to be 
triLe in your dealings with him ; because your 
power over him is greater in proportion to his 
ignorance, and his remedy more difficult in 
proportion to his distance.* 

98. I have just said the breadth of sea 
increases the cost of exchange. Now note 
that exchange, or commerce, iji itself, is always 
costly; the sum of the value of the goods 
being diminished by the cost of their convey- 
ance, and by the maintenance of the persons 
employed in it ; so that it is only when there 
is advantage to both producers (in getting 
the one thing for the other) greater than the 
loss in conveyance, that the exchange is expe- 
dient. And it can only be justly conducted 
when the porters kept by the producers 
(commonly called merchants) expect mere pay, 
and not profit. -f For in just commerce there 
are but three parties — the two persons or 

[* I wish some one would examine and publish accurately 
the late dealings of the Governors of the Cape with the 
CafErs.] 

[t By "pay," I mean wages for labour or skill; by 
"profit," gain dependent on the state of the market.] 

H 



114 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

societies exchanging, and the agent or agents 
of exchange; the value of the things to be 
exchanged is known by both the exchangers, 
and each receives equal value, neither gaining 
nor losing (for whatever one gains the other 
loses). The intermediate agent is paid a 
known per-centage by both, partly for labour 
in conveyance, partly for care, knowledge, and 
risk ; every attempt at concealment of the 
amount of the pay indicates either effort on 
the part of the agent to obtain unjust profit, 
or effort on the part of the exchangers to 
refuse him just pay. But for the most part 
it is the first, namely the effort on the part 
of the merchant to obtain larger profit (so- 
called) by buying cheap and selling dear. 
Some part, indeed, of this larger gain is 
deserved, and might be openly demanded, 
because it is the reward of the merchant's 
knowledge, and foresight of probable neces- 
sity ; but the greater part of such gain is 
unjust; and unjust in this most fatal way, that 
it depends, first, on keeping the exchangers 
ignorant of the exchange value of the articles ;• 
and, secondly, on taking advantage of the 
buyer's need and the seller's poverty. It is, 



IV. COMMERCE. I I 5 

therefore, one of the essential, and quite the 
most fatal, forms of usury; for usury means 
merely taking an exorbitant * sum for the use 
of anything ; and it is no matter whether the 
exorbitance is on loan or exchange, on rent 
or on price — the essence of the usury being 
that it is obtained by advantage of opportunity 
or necessity, and not as due reward for labour. 
All the great thinkers, therefore, have held it 
to be unnatural and impious, in so far as it 
feeds on the distress of others, or their folly. f 
Nevertheless, attempts to repress it by law 
must for ever be ineffective; though Plato, 
Bacon, and the First Napoleon — all three of 
them men who knew somewhat more of 
humanity than the '' British merchant " usually 
does — tried their hands at it, and have left 

[* Since I wrote this, I have worked out the question of 
interest of money, which always, until lately, had em- 
barrassed and defeated me ; and I find that the payment of 
interest of any amount whatever is real "usury," and en- 
tirely unjustifiable. I was shown this chiefly by the pam- 
phlets issued by Mr, W. C. Sillar, though I greatly regret 
the impatience which causes Mr. Sillar to regard usury as 
the radical crime in political economy. There are others 
worse, that act with it. ] 

+ Hence Dante's companionship of Cahors, Iri/., canto 
xi., supported by the view taken of the matter throughout 
the Middle Ages, in common with the Greeks. 



I I 6 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

some (probably) good moderative forms of 
law, which we will examine in their place. 
But the only final check upon it must be 
radical purifying of the national character, 
for being, as Bacon calls it, ''concessum 
propter duritiem cordis," it is to be done away 
with by touching the heart only ; not, however, 
without medicinal law — as in the case of the 
other permission, ^'propter duritiem." But 
in this more than in anything (though much 
in all, and though in this he would not himself 
allow of their application, for his own laws 
against usury are sharp enough), Plato's words 
in the fourth book of the Polity are true, that 
neither drugs, nor charms, nor burnings, will 
touch a deep-lying pohtical sore, any more 
than a deep bodily one ; but only right and 
utter change of constitution : and that '^ they 
do but lose their labour who think that by 
any tricks of law they can get the better of 
these mischiefs of commerce, and see not that 
they hew at a Hydra." 

99. And indeed this Hydra seems so unslay- 
able, and sin sticks so fast between the joinings 
of the stones of buying and selling, that " to 
trade " in things, or literally ^' cross-give " 



IV. — COMMERCE. I I 7 

them, has warped itself, by the instinct of 
nations, into their worst word for fraud; for, 
because in trade there cannot but be trust, 
and it seems also that there cannot but also 
be injury in answer to it, what is merely fraud 
between enemies becomes treachery among 
friends : and ^' trader," " traditor," and 
'' traitor " are but the same word. For which 
simplicity of language there is more reason 
than at first appears ; for as in true commerce 
there is no " profit," so in true commerce there 
is no ^'sale." The idea of sale is that of an 
interchange between enemies respectively en- 
deavouring to get the better one of another ; 
but commerce is an exchange between friends ; 
and there is no desire but that it should be 
just, any more than there would be between 
members of the same family.* The moment 
there is a bargain over the pottage, the family 
relation is dissolved : — t^^pically, '' the days 
of mourning for my father are at hand." 

[* I do not wonder when I re-read this, that people talk 
about my "sentiment." But there is no sentiment what- 
ever in the matter. It is a hard and bare commercial fact, 
that if two people deal together who don't try to cheat each 
other, they will, in a given time, make more money out of 
each other than if they do. See § 104.] 



I I 8 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

Whereupon follows the resolve, " then will I 
slay my brother." 

lOO. This inhumanity of mercenary com- 
merce is the more notable because it is a 
fulfilment of the law that the corruption of 
the best is the worst. For as, taking the 
body natural for symbol of the body politic, 
the governing and forming powers may be 
likened to the brain, and the labouring to the 
limbs, the mercantile, presiding over circula- 
tion and communication of things in changed 
utilities, is symbolized by the heart ; and, if 
that hardens, all is lost. And this is the 
ultimate lesson which the leader of EngHsh 
intellect meant for us, (a lesson, indeed, not 
all his own, but part of the old wisdom of 
humanity,) in the tale of the Merchant of 
Venice; in which the true and incorrupt 
merchant, — kind and free ^ beyond every other 
Shakspearian conception of men, — is opposed 
to the corrupted merchant, or usurer; the 
lesson being deepened by the expression of 
the strange hatred which the corrupted mer- 
chant bears to the pure one, mixed with 
intense scorn, — 

''This is the fool that lent out money 



IV. COMMERCE. I I9 

gratis; look to him, jailor," (as to lunatic no 
less than criminal) the enmity, observe, hav- 
ing its symbolism literally carried out by being 
aimed straight at the heart, and finally foiled 
by a literal appeal to the great moral law that 
flesh and blood cannot be weighed, enforced 
by '' Portia " * Q' Portion "), the type of divine 
Fortune, found, not in gold, nor in silver, but 

* Shakspeare would certainly never have chosen this name 
had he been forced to retain the Roman spelling. Like 
Perdita, "lost lady," or Cordelia, "heart-lady," Portia is 
"fortune" lady. The two great relative groups of words, 
Fortuna, fero, and fors — Portio, porto, and pars (with the 
lateral branch op-portune, im-portune, opportunity, etc.), are 
of deep and intricate significance ; their various senses of 
bringing, abstracting, and sustaining being all centralized by 
the wheel (which bears and moves at once), or still better, 
the ball (spera) of fortune, — "Volve sua spera, e beata si 
gode : " the motive power of this wheel distinguishing its 
goddess from the fixed majesty of Necessitas with her iron 
nails; or dvdyKr], with her pillar of fire and iridescent 
orbits, ^xed at the centre. Portus and porta, and gate in 
its connexion with gain, form another interesting branch 
group ; and Mors, the concentration of delaying, is always 
to be remembered with Fors, the concentration of bringing 
and bearing, passing on into Fortis and Fortitude. 

[This note is literally a mere memorandum for the future 
work which I am now completing in Fors Clavigera ; it was 
printed partly in vanity, but also with real desire to get 
people to share the interest I found in the careful study of 
the leading words in noble languages. Compare the next 
note. ] 



120 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

in lead, that is to say, in endurance and 
patience, not in splendour ; and finally taught 
by her Hps also, declaring, instead of the law 
and quality of '* merces," the greater law and 
quality of mercy, which is not strained, but 
drops as the rain, blessing him that gives 
and him that takes. And observe that this 
^' mercy" is not the mean '' Misericordia," but 
the mighty ^'Gratia," answered by Gratitude, 
(observe Shylock's learning on the, to him 
detestable, word, gratis^ and compare the 
relations of Grace to Equity given in the 
second chapter of the second book of the 
Memorabilia ;) that is to say, it is the gracious 
or loving, instead of the strained, or competing 
manner, of doing things, answered, not onty 
with *' merces " or pay, but with ^' merci " or 
thanks. And this is indeed the meaning of 
the great benediction *' Grace, mercy, and 
peace," .for there can be no peace without 
grace, (not even by help of rifled cannon,) 
nor even without triplicity of graciousness, for 
the Greeks, who began but with one Grace, 
had to open their scheme into three before 
they had done. 

10 1. With the usual tendency of long 



IV. COMMERCE. 121 

repeated thought, to take the surface for the 
deep, we have conceived these goddesses as 
if they only gave loveHness to gesture ; where- 
as their true function is to give graciousness 
to deed, the other loveliness arising naturally 
out of that. In which function Charis becomes 
Charitas;^ and has a name and praise even 
greater than that of Faith or Truth, for these 
may be maintained sullenly and proudly; 
but Charis is in her countenance always 
gladdening (Aglaia), and in her service instant 
and humble; and the true wife of Vulcan, 
or Labour. And it is not until her sincer- 
ity of function is lost, and her mere beauty 

* As Charis becomes Charitas, the word " Cher," or 
" Dear," passes from Shylock's sense of it (to buy cheap and 
sell dear) into Antonio's sense of it : emphasized with the 
final i in tender " Cheri," and hushed to English calmness 
in our noble " Cherish." The reader must not think that 
any care can be misspent in tracing the connexion and power 
of the words which we have to use in the sequel. (See 
Appendix VI.) Much education sums itself in making men 
economize their words, and understand them. Nor is it 
possible to estimate the harm which has been done, in matters 
of higher speculation and conduct, by loose verbiage, though 
we may guess at it by observing the dislike which people 
show to having anything about their religion said to them 
in simple words, because then they understand it. Thus 
congregations meet weekly to invoke the influence of a 



122 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

contemplated instead of her patience, that she 
is born again of the foam flake, and becomes 
Aphrodite; and it is then only that she be- 
comes capable of joining herself to war and 
to the enmities of men, instead of to labour 
and their services. Therefore the fable of 
Mars and Venus is chosen by Homer, pic- 
turing himself as Demodocus, to sing at the 
games in the court of Alcinous. Phaeacia is 
the Homeric island of Atlantis; an image of 
noble and wise government, concealed, (how 
slightly !) merely by the change of a short 
vowel for a long one in the name of its queen ; 
yet misunderstood by all later writers, (even 
by Horace, in his '' pinguis, Phaeaxque "). 

Spirit of Life and Truth ; yet if any part of that character 
were intelligibly expressed to them by the formulas of the 
service, they would be offended. Suppose, for instance, in 
the closing benediction, the clergyman were to give vital 
significance to the vague word " Holy," and were to say, 
"the fellowship of the Helpful and Honest Ghost be with 
you, and remain with you always," what would be the 
horror of many, first at the irreverence of so intelligible an 
expression ; and secondly, at the discomfortable occurrence of 
the suspicion that while throughout the commercial dealings 
of the week they had denied the propriety of Help, and 
possibility of Honesty, the Person whose company they had 
been now asking to be blessed with could have no fellow- 
ship with cruel people or knaves. 



IV. COMMERCE. I 2 3 

That fable expresses the perpetual error of 
men in thinking that grace and dignity can 
only be reached by the soldier, and never by 
the artizan; so that commerce and the useful 
arts have had the honour and beauty taken 
away, and only the Fraud and Pain left to 
them, with the lucre. Which is, indeed, one 
great reason of the continual blundering about 
the offices of government with respect to com- 
merce. The higher classes are ashamed to 
employ themselves in it; and though ready 
enough to fight for (or occasionally against) 
the people,— to preach to them,— or judge 
them, will not break bread for them ; the re- 
fined upper servant who has wilHngly looked 
after the burnishing of the armoury and 
ordering of the Hbrary, not liking to set foot 
in the larder. 

1 02. Farther still. As Charis becomes 
Charitas on the one side, she becomes — 
better still — Chara, Joy, on the other; or 
rather this is her very mother's milk and the 
beauty of her childhood; for God brings no 
enduring Love, nor any other good, out of 
pain ; nor out of contention ; but out of joy 
and harmony. And in this sense, human and 



124 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

divine, music and gladness, and the measures 
of both, come into her name; and Cher 
becomes full-vowelled Cheer, and Cheerful; 
and Chara opens into Choir and Choral.* 

103. And lastly. As Grace passes into 
Freedom of action, Charis becomes Eleutheria, 
or Liberality ; a form of liberty quite curiously 
and intensely different from the thing usually 
understood by " Liberty " in modern language : 
indeed, much more like what some people 
would call slavery : for a Greek always under- 
stood, primarily, by liberty, deliverance from 
the law of his own passions (or from what the 
Christian writers call bondage of corruption), 



* " TCL fxh odv dWa ^cDa ovk ex^tv ai(x67]<np tQv ip rats 
KLVTjaeaL rd^eiop ovde dra^iQp, oh drj pvdfibs Svofxa /cat 
dpfiopia' 7]fjup de ovs e'cirofxep rods deotis (Apollo, the 
Muses, and Bacchus — the grave Bacchus, that is— ruling 
the choir of age ; or Bacchus restraining ; ' sseva tene^ 
cum Berecyntio cornu, tympana,' etc.) <rv7Xopej;Tas 
dedocrOai, toijtovs eXpai Kat roi)s dediitKoras ttjp 'ivpvdixop 
re Kol epapfxoviop aicrdyjaip fxed" ijdopijs . . . %6/)oi'S re 
(hvofiuKevai. irapd ttjs X'^P^^ 'djxcpvTOP Spofxa." "Other 
animals have no perception of order nor of disorder in 
motion ; but for us, Apollo and Bacchus and the Muses 
are appointed to mingle in our dances ; and these are they 
who have given us the sense of delight in rhythm and 
harmony. And the name of choir, choral dance, (we may 
believe,) came from chara (delight)." — Laws, book ii. 



IV. — COMMERCE. 12 5 

and this a complete liberty : not being merely 
safe from the Siren, but also unbound from the 
mast, and not having to resist the passion, but 
making it fawn upon, and follow him — (this 
may be again partly the meaning of the 
fawning beasts about the Circean cave; so, 
again, George Herbert — 

Correct thy passion's spite, 

Then may the beasts draw thee to happy Hght) — 

And it is only in such generosity that any 
man becomes capable of so governing others 
as to take true part in any system of national 
economy. Nor is there any other eternal 
distinction between the upper and lower 
classes than this form of hberty, Eleutheria, 
or benignity, in the one, and its opposite of 
slavery, Douleia, or malignity, in the other; 
the separation of these two orders of men, 
and the firm government of the lower by the 
higher, being the first conditions of possible 
wealth and economy in any State, — the Gods 
giving it no greater gift than the power to 
discern its true freemen, and ^' malign um 
spernere vulgus." 

104. While I have traced the finer and 



126 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

higher laws of this matter for those whom they 
concern, I have also to note the material law — 
vulgarly expressed in the proverb, " Honesty 
is the best policy." That proverb is indeed 
wholly inapplicable to matters of private in- 
terest. It is not true that honesty, as far as 
material gain is concerned, profits individuals. 
A clever and cruel knave will in a mixed 
society always be richer than an honest person 
can be. But Honesty is the best '' policy," if 
policy mean practice of State. For fraud gains 
nothing in a State. It only enables the knaves 
in it to live at the expense of honest people; 
while there is for every act of fraud, however 
small, a loss of wealth to the community. 
Whatever the fraudulent person gains, some 
other person loses, as fraud produces nothing ; 
and there is, besides, the loss of the time and 
thought spent in accomplishing the fraud, and 
of the strength otherwise obtainable by mutual 
help (not to speak of the fevers of anxiety and 
jealousy in the blood, which are a heavy 
physical loss, as I will show in due time). 
Practically, when the nation is deeply corrupt, 
cheat answers to cheat; every one is in turn 
imposed upon, and there is to the body politic 



IV. COMMERCE. 12/ 

the dead loss of the ingenuity, together with 
the incalculable mischief of the injury to each 
defrauded person, producing collateral effect 
unexpectedly. My neighbour sells me bad 
meat: I sell him in return flawed iron. We 
neither of us get one atom of pecuniary advan- 
tage on the whole transaction, but we both 
suffer unexpected inconvenience ; my men get 
scurvy, and his cattle-truck runs off the rails. 

105. The examination of this form of Charis 
must, therefore, lead us into the discussion 
of the principles of government in general, 
and especially of that of the poor by the 
rich, discovering how the Graciousness joined 
with the Greatness, or Love with Majestas, 
is the true Dei Gratia, or Divine Right, of 
every form and manner of King; ix.^ specifi- 
cally, of the thrones, dominations, princedoms, 
virtues, and powers of the earth :— of the 
thrones, stable, or ^'ruling," Hterally right- 
doing powers {^' rex eris, recte si facies ") :— 
of the dominations— lordly, edifying, dominant 
and harmonious powers ; chiefly domestic, over 
the ''built thing," domus, or house; and inhe- 
rently twofold, Dominus and Domina; Lord 
and Lady : — of the Princedoms, pre-eminent, 



128 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

incipient^ creative, and demonstrative powers; 
thus poetic and mercantile, in the '^prin- 
ceps carmen deduxisse" and the merchant- 
prince : — of the Virtues or Courages ; mihtant, 
guiding, or Ducal powers : — and finally of the 
Strengths, or Forces pure; magistral powers, 
of the More over the less, and the forceful 
and free over the weak and servile elements 
of Hfe. 

Subject enough for the next paper, involving 
"economical" principles of some iniportance, 
of which, for theme, here is a sentence, which 
I do not care to translate, for it would sound 
harsh in EngHsh,* though, truly, it is one of 
the tenderest ever uttered by man ; which may 
be meditated over, or rather through^ in the 
meanwhile, by any one who will take the 
pains : — 

'^Ap' oSj', (bcrirep L-inros rw aveTnar-qixovL fxev eyx^i-povvTL §e 
Xpri<^QoiL ^vixia iarlv, ovtco Kal abeXcpbs, orav tls avT($ f.i.rj 
eTrtcrrd/xei'os eyX'^'-PV XP^'^^^'-^ f'»7M'a ecrrt ; 

[* My way now, is to say things plainly, if I can, whether 
they sound harsh or not ; — this is the translation—" Is it 
possible, then, that as a horse is only a mischief to any one 
who attempts to use him without knowing how, so also our 
brother, if we attempt to use him without knowing how, 
may be a mischief to us ? "] 



CHAPTER V. 

GOVERNMENT. 

1 06. It remains for us, as I stated in the 
close of the last chapter, to examine first the 
principles of government in general, and then 
those of the government of the Poor by the 
Rich. 

The government of a state consists in its 
customs, laws, and councils, and their enforce- 
ments. 

I. Customs. 

As one person primarily differs from another 
by fineness of nature, and, secondarily, by 
fineness of training, so also, a poHte nation 
differs from a savage one, first, by the refine- 
ment of its nature, and secondly by the 
delicacy of its customs. 

In the completeness of custom, which is 
the nation's self-government, there are three 



I 30 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

Stages — first, fineness in method of doing or of 
being ; — called the manner or moral of acts ; 
secondly, firmness in holding such method 
after adoption, so that it shall become a habit 
in the character: i.e., a constant ''having" or 
''behaving;" and, lastly, ethical power in 
performance and endurance, which is the skill 
following on habit, and the ease reached by 
frequency of right doing. 

The sensibility of the nation is indicated 
by the fineness of its customs; its courage, 
continence, and self-respect by its persistence 
in them. 

By sensibility I mean its natural perception 
of beauty, fitness, and rightness ; or of what is 
lovely, decent, and just : faculties dependent 
much on race, and the primal signs of fine 
breeding in man ; but cultivable also by edu- 
cation, and necessarily perishing without it. 
True education has, indeed, no other function 
than the development of these faculties, and of 
the relative will. It has been the great error 
of modern intelligence to mistake science for 
education. You do not educate a man by 
telling him what he knew not, but by making 
him what he was not. 



V. GOVERNMENT. I 3 I 

And making him what he will remain 
for ever : for no wash of weeds will bring 
back the faded purple. And in that dyeing 
there are two processes — first, the cleansing 
and wringing-out, which is the baptism with 
water ; and then the infusing of the blue and 
scarlet colours, gentleness and justice, which 
is the baptism with fire. 

107.* The customs and manners of a sensi- 
tive and highly-trained race are always Vital : 
that is to say, they are orderly manifestations 
of intense Hfe, Hke the habitual action of 
the fingers of a musician. The customs and 
manners of a vile and rude race, on the con- 
trary, are conditions of decay: they are not, 
properly speaking, habits, but incrustations; 
not restraints, or forms, of life ; but gangrenes, 
noisome, and the beginnings of death. 

And generally, so far as custom attaches 
itself to indolence instead of action, and to 
prejudice instead of perception, it takes this 
deadly character, so that thus 

Custom hangs upon us with a weight 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life. 

[* Think over this paragraph carefully ; it should have 



132 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

But that weight, if it becomes impetus, 
(living instead of dead weight) is just what 
gives value to custom, when it works zvith life, 
instead of against it. 

108. The high ethical training of a nation 
implies perfect Grace, Pitifulness, and Peace; 
it is irreconcilably inconsistent with filthy or 
mechanical employments, — with the desire of 
money, — and with mental states of anxiety, 
jealousy, or indifference to pain. The present 
insensibility of the upper classes of Europe to 
the surrounding aspects of suffering, unclean- 
ness, and crime, binds them not only into one 
responsibility with the sin, but into one dis- 
honour with the foulness, which rot at their 
thresholds. The crimes daily recorded in the 
police-courts of London and Paris (and much 
more those which are ^^//recorded) are a dis- 
grace to the whole body politic ; * they are, 

been much expanded to be quite intelligible ; but it contains 
all that I want it to contain.] 

* " The ordinary brute, who flourishes in the very centre 
of ornate life, tells us of unknown depths on the verge of 
which we totter, being bound to thank our stars every day 
we live that there is not a general outbreak, and a revolt 
from the yoke of civilization." — Times leader, Dec. 25, 1862. 
Admitting that our stars are to be thanked for our safety, 
whom are we to thank for the danger ? 



V. — GOVERNMENT. I 3 3 

as in the body natural, stains of disease on 
a face of delicate skin, making the delicacy 
itself frightful. Similarly, the filth and poverty 
permitted or ignored in the midst of us are as 
dishonourable to the whole social body, as in 
the body natural it is to wash the face, but 
leave the hands and feet foul. Christ's way is 
the only true one : begin at the feet ; the face 
will take care of itself. 

109. Yet, since necessarily, in the frame 
of a nation, nothing but the head can be of 
gold, and the feet, for the work they have to 
do, must be part of iron, part of clay; — foul 
or mechanical work is always reduced by a 
noble race to the minimum in quantity; and, 
even then, performed and endured, not with- 
out sense of degradation, as a fine temper is 
wounded by the sight of the lower offices of 
the body. The highest conditions of human 
society reached hitherto have cast such work 
to slaves ; but supposing slavery of a poHtically 
defined kind to be done away with, mechani- 
cal and foul employment must, in all highly 
organised states, take the aspect either of 
punishment or probation. All criminals should 
at once be set to the most dangerous and 



134 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

painful forms of it, especially to work in 
mines and at furnaces,"^ so as to relieve the 
innocent population as far as possible : of 
merely rough (not mechanical) manual labour, 
especially agricultural, a large portion should 
be done by the upper classes ; — bodily health, 
and sufficient contrast and repose for the mental 
functions y being unattainable without it ; what 
necessarily inferior labour remains to be done, 

* Our politicians, even the best of them, regard only the 
distress caused by the faihtre of mechanical labour. The 
degradation caused by its excess is a far more serious subject 
of thought, and of future fear. I shall examine this part 
of our subject at length hereafter. There can hardly be any 
doubt, at present, cast on the truth of the above passages, 
as all the great thinkers are unanimous on the matter. 
Plato's words are terrific in their scorn and pity whenever he 
touches on the mechanical arts. He calls the men employed 
in them not even human, but partially and diminutively 
human, '' dvdpcoTriaKot," and opposes such work to noble 
occupations, not merely as prison is opposed to freedom, 
but as a convict's dishonoured prison is to the temple (escape 
from them being like that of a criminal to the sanctuary) ; 
and the destruction caused by them being of soul no less 
than body. — J^e/>. vi. 9. Compare Laws, v. 1 1. Xenophon 
dwells on the evil of occupations at the furnace, and especially 
their *' daxo\la., want of leisure." — £co7t. i. 4. (Modern 
England, with all its pride of education, has lost that first 
sense of the word "school ; " and till it recover that, it will 
find no other rightly.) His word for the harm to the soul 
is to " break " it, as we say of the heart. — £coji. i. 6. And 
herein, also, is the root of the scorn, otherwise apparently 



V. GOVERNMENT. I 35 

as especially in manufactures, should, and 
always will, when the relations of society 
are reverent and harmonious, fall to the lot 
of those who, for the time, are fit for nothing 
better. For as, whatever the perfectness of 
the educational system, there must remain 
infinite differences between the natures and 
capacities of men ; and these differing natures 
are generally rangeable under the two qualities 

most strange and cruel, with which Homer, Dante, and 
Shakspeare always speak of the populace ; for it is entirely 
true that, in great states, the lower orders are low by nature 
as well as by task, being precisely that part of the common- 
wealth which has been thrust down for its coarseness or 
unworthiness (by coarseness I mean especially insensibility 
and irreverence— the *' profane" of Horace); and when 
this ceases to be so, and the corruption and profanity are in 
the higher instead of the lower orders, there arises, first 
helpless confusion ; then, if the lower classes deserve power, 
ensues swift revolution, and they get it ; but if neither the 
populace nor their rulers deserve it, there follows mere 
darkness and dissolution, till, out of the putrid elements, 
some new capacity of order rises, like grass on a grave ; if 
not, there is no more hope, nor shadow of turning, for that 
nation. Atropos has her way with it. 

So that the law of national health is like that of a great 
lake or sea, in perfect but slow circulation, letting the dregs 
fall continually to the lowest place, and the clear water rise ; 
yet so as that there shall be no neglect of the lower orders, 
but perfect supervision and sympathy, so that if one member 
suffer, all members shall suffer with it. 



/ 



136 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

of lordly, (or tending towards rule, construc- 
tion, and harmony), and servile (or tending 
towards misrule, destruction, and discord); 
and, since the lordly part is only in a state 
of profitableness while ruling, and the servile 
only in a state of redeemableness while serv- 
ing, the whole health of the state depends 
on the manifest separation of these two ele- 
ments of its mind ; for, if the servile part be 
not separated and rendered visible in service, 
it mixes with, and corrupts, the entire body 
of the state ; and if the lordly part be not 
distinguished, and set to rule, it is crushed 
and lost, being turned to no account, so that 
the rarest qualities of the nation are all given 



XL Laws. 

no. These are the definitions and bonds of 
custom, or of what the nation desires should 
become custom. 

Law is either archic,-|- (of direction), meristic, 
(of division), or critic, (of judgment). 

* " oXiyrjs, Kal dXXwj yiyvo/jievrji." (Little, and that little 
born in vain. ) The bitter sentence never was so true as at 
this clay. 

t [This following note is a mere cluster of memoranda, 



V. GOVERNMENT. 137 

Archie law is that of appointment and pre- 
cept : it defines what is and is not to be done. 

Meristic law is that of balance and dis- 
tribution : it defines what is and is not to be 
possessed. 

Critic law is that of discernment and award : 
it defines what is and is not to be suffered. 

III. A. Archic Law. If we choose to 
unite the laws of precept and distribution 
under the head of '' statutes/' all law is simply 
either of statute or judgment; that is, first the 
estabHshment of ordinance, and, secondly, the 



but I keep it for reference.] Thetic, or Thesniic, would 
perhaps be a better term than archic ; but liable to be 
confused with some which we shall want relating to 
Theoria. The administrators of the three great divisions 
of law are severally Archons, Merists, and Dicasts. The 
Archons are the true princes, or beginners of things ; or 
leaders (as of an orchestra). The Merists are properly the 
Domini, or Lords of houses and nations. The Dicasts, 
properly, the judges, and that with Olympian justice, which 
reaches to heaven and hell. The violation of archic law is 
afiapria (error), irovrjpia (failure), or irXij/xfieXeLa (discord). 
The violation of meristic law is avoixLa (iniquity). The 
violation of critic law is ddiKla (injury). Iniquity is the 
central generic term ; for all law '\?> fatal ; it is the division 
to men of their fate ; as the fold of their pasture, it is f o^os ; 
as the assigning of their portion, ixotpo.. 



138 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

assignment of the reward, or penalty, due to 
its observance or violation. 

To some extent these two forms of law 
must be associated, and, with every ordinance, 
the penalty of disobedience to it be also deter- 
mined. But since the degrees and guilt of 
disobedience vary, the determination of due 
reward and punishment must be modified by 
discernment of special fact, which is peculiarly 
the office of the judge, as distinguished from 
that of the lawgiver and law-sustainer, or king; 
not but that the two offices are always theore- 
tically, and in early stages, or limited numbers, 
of society, are often practically, united in the 
same person or persons. 

112. Also, it is necessary to keep clearly 
in view the distinction between these two 
kinds of law, because the possible range of 
law is wider in proportion to their separation. 
There are many points of conduct respecting 
which the nation may wisely express its will 
by a written precept or resolve, yet not enforce 
it by penalty :* and the expedient degree of 

[* This is the only sentence which, in revising these 
essays, I am now inclined to question ; but the point is one 
of extreme difficulty. There might be a law, for instance, of 



V. GOVERNMENT. I 39 

penalty is always quite a separate considera- 
tion from the expedience of the statute; for 
the statute may often be better enforced by 
mercy than severity, and is also easier in 
the bearing, and less likely to be abrogated. 
Farther, laws of precept have reference espe- 
cially to youth, and concern themselves with 
training; but laws of judgment to manhood, 
and concern themselves with remedy and 
reward. There is a highly curious feeling in 
the English mind against educational law : 
we think no man's liberty should be interfered 
with till he has done irrevocable wrong; 
whereas it is then just too late for the only 
gracious and kingly interference, which is to 
hinder him from doing it. Make your educa- 
tional laws strict, and your criminal ones may 
be gentle; but, leave youth its liberty, and 
you will have to dig dungeons for age. And 
it is good for a man that he ''wear the yoke 
in his youth : " for the reins may then be of 
silken thread ; and with sweet chime of silver 

curfew, that candles should be put out, unless for necessary 
service, at such and such an hour, the idea of "necessary 
service " being quite indefinable, and no penalty possible ; 
yet there would be a distinct consciousness of illegal conduct 
in young ladies' minds who danced by candlelight till dawn.] 



/ 






140 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

bells at the bridle ; but, for the captivity of 
age, you must forge the iron fetter, and cast 
the passing bell. 

113. Since no law can be, in a final or 
true sense, established, but by right, (all un- 
just laws involving the ultimate necessity of 
their own abrogation), the law-giving can only 
become a law-sustaining power in so far as 
it is Royal, or " right doing ; " — in so far, that 
is, as it rules, not mis-rules, and orders, not 
dis-orders, the things submitted to it. Throned 
on this rock of justice, the kingly power be- 
comes established and estabhshing ; '' ^eto?," 
or divine, and, therefore, it is literally true 
that no ruler can err, so long as he is a ruler, 
or apywv ovhei^ afiaprdvei rore orav ap-)(cov yj ; 
perverted by careless thought, which has cost 
the world somewhat, into — " the king can do 
no wrong." 

114. B. Meristic Law,* or that of the 

tenure of property, first determines what every 

individual possesses by right, and secures it 

to him ; and what he possesses by wrong, 

[* Read this and the next paragraph with attention ; they 
contain clear statements, which I cannot mend, of things 
most necessary.] 



V. GOVERNMENT. I 4 I 

and deprives him of it. But it has a far 
higher provisory function : it determines what 
every man shotdd possess, and puts it within 
his reach on due conditions; and what he 
should not possess, and puts this out of his 
reach, conclusively. 

115. Every article of human wealth has 
certain conditions attached to its merited 
possession; when these are unobserved, pos- 
session becomes rapine. And the object of 
meristic law is not only to secure to every man 
his rightful share (the share, that is, which he 
has worked for, produced, or received by gift 
from a rightful owner), but to enforce the 
due conditions of possession, as far as law 
may conveniently reach ; for instance, that 
land shall not be wantonly allowed to run to 
waste, that streams shall not be poisoned by 
the persons through whose properties they 
pass, nor air be rendered unwholesome be- 
yond given limits. Laws of this kind exist 
already in rudimentary degree, but need large 
development : the just laws respecting the 
possession of works of art have not hitherto 
been so much as conceived, and the daily loss 
of national wealth, and of its use, in this 



142 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

respect, is quite incalculable. And these laws 
need revision quite as much respecting pro- 
perty in national as in private hands. For 
instance : the public are under a vague im- 
pression that, because they have paid for the 
contents of the British Museum, every one 
has an equal right to see and to handle them. 
But the public have similarly paid for the 
contents of Woolwich arsenal; yet do not 
expect free access to it, or handHng of its 
contents. The British Museum is neither a 
free circulating library, nor a free school : it 
is a place for the safe preservation, and ex- 
hibition on due occasion, of unique books, 
unique objects of natural history, and unique 
works of art ; its books can no more be used 
by everybody than its coins can be handled, 
or its statues cast. There ought to be free 
libraries in every quarter of London, with 
large and complete reading-rooms attached ; 
so also free educational museums should be 
open in every quarter of London, all day 
long, and till late at night, well lighted, well 
catalogued, and rich in contents both of art 
and natural history. But neither the British 
Museum nor National Gallery is a school; 



V. GOVERNMENT. I 43 

they are treasuries ; and both should be 
severely restricted in access and in use. 
Unless some order of this kind is made, and 
that soon, for the MSS. department of the 
Museum, (its superintendents have sorrowfully 
told me this, and repeatedly,) the best MSS. 
in the collection will be destroyed, irretrievably, 
by the careless and continual handling to 
which they are now subjected. 

Finally, in certain conditions of a nation's 
progress, laws limiting accumulation of any 
kind of property ma}^ be found expedient. 

1 1 6. C. Critic Law determines questions of 
injury, and assigns due rewards and punish- 
ments to conduct. 

Two curious economical questions arise 
laterally with respect to this branch of law, 
namely, the cost of crime, and the cost of 
judgment. The cost of crime is endured by 
nations ignorantly, that expense being nowhere 
stated in their budgets ; the cost of judgment, 
patiently, (provided only it can be had pure for 
the money,) because the science, or perhaps 
we ought rather to say the art, of law, is felt 
to found a noble profession and discipline ; so 



144 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

that civilized nations are usually glad that a 
number of persons should be supported by 
exercise in oratory and analysis. But it has 
not yet been calculated what the practical value 
might have been, in other directions, of the 
intelligence now occupied in deciding, through 
courses of years, what might have been de- 
cided as justly, had the date of judgment 
been fixed, in as many hours. Imagine one 
half of the funds which any great nation 
devotes to dispute by law, applied to the deter- 
mination of physical questions in medicine, 
agriculture, and theoretic science; and calcu- 
late the probable results within the next ten 
years ! 

I say nothing yet of the more deadly, more 
lamentable loss, involved in the use of pur- 
chased, instead of personal, justice — " iiraKTO) 
Trap' dWcov — airopla oIkcicov." 

117. In order to true analysis of critic law, 
we must understand the real meaning of the 
word ''injury." 

We commonly understand by it, any kind of 
harm done by one man to another ; but we 
do not define the idea of harm : sometimes 
we limit it to the harm which the sufferer is 



V. GOVERNMENT. I 45 

conscious of; whereas much the worst injuries 
are those he is ^///conscious of; and, at other 
times, we hmit the idea to violence, or re- 
straint; whereas much the worse forms of 
injury are to be accomplished by indolence, 
and the withdrawal of restraint. 

1 1 8. ^* Injury" is then simply the refusal, or 
violation of, any man's right or claim upon his 
fellows : which claim, much talked of in modern 
times, under the term ''right," is mainly re- 
solvable into two branches : a man's claim not 
to be hindered from doing what he should ; 
and his claim to be hindered from doing what 
he should not; these two forms of hindrance 
being intensified by reward, help, and fortune, 
or Fors, on one side, and by punishm.ent, im- 
pediment, and even final arrest, or Mors, on 
the other. 

119. Now, in order to a man's obtaining 
these two rights, it is clearly needful that the 
worth of him should be approximately known ; 
as well as the want of worth, which has, un- 
happily, been usually the principal subject of 
study for critic law, careful hitherto only to 
mark degrees of de-merit, instead of merit ; — 
assigning, indeed, to the i^^ficiencies (not 

K 



146 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

always, alas ! even to these) just estimate, fine, 
or penalty; but to the ^/ficiencies, on the 
other side, which are by much the more in- 
teresting, as well as the only profitable part of 
its subject, assigning neither estimate nor aid. 

120. Now, it is in this higher and perfect 
function of critic law, enabling instead of dis- 
abling, that it becomes truly Kingly, instead of 
Draconic : (what Providence gave the great, 
wrathful legislator his name ?) : that is, it be- 
comes the law of man and of life, instead of 
the law of the worm and of death — both of 
these laws being set in changeless poise one 
against another, and the enforcement of both 
being the eternal function of the lawgiver, and 
true claim of every living soul : such claim 
being indeed strong to be mercifully hindered, 
and even, if need be, abolished, when longer 
existence means only deeper destruction, but 
stronger still to be mercifully helped, and 
recreated, when longer existence and new 
creation mean nobler life. So that reward 
and punishment will be found to resolve them- 
selves mainly * into help and hindrance ; and 

[* Mainly ; not altogether. Conclusive reward of high 
virtue is loving and crowning, not helping; and conclusive 



V. GOVERNMENT. 14/ 

these again will issue naturally from true recog- 
nition of deserving, and the just reverence and 
just wrath which follow instinctively on such 
recognition. 

121. I say, ''follow," but, in reality, they are 
part of the recognition. Reverence is as in- 
stinctive as anger; — both of them instant on 
true vision : it is sight and understanding that 
we have to teach, and these are reverence. 
Make a man perceive worth, and in its reflection 
he sees his own relative unworth, and worships 
thereupon inevitably, not with stiff courtesy, 
but rejoicingly, passionately, and, best of all, 
restfiilly : for the inner capacity of awe and 
love is infinite in man ; and only in finding 
these, can we find peace. And the common 
insolences and petulances of the people, and 
their talk of equahty, are not irreverence in 
them in the least, but mere bhndness, stupe- 
faction, and fog in the brains,* the first sign of 

punishment of deep vice is hating and crushing, not merely 
hindering.] 

* Compare Chaucer's "villany" (clownishness). 

Full foul and chorlishe seemed she, 
And eke villanous for to be, 
And little coulde of norture 
To worship any creature. 



148 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

any cleansing away of which is, that they 
gain some power of discerning, and some 
patience in submitting to, their true counsellors 
and governors. In the mode of such discern- 
ment consists the real ^'constitution" of the 
state, more than in the titles or offices of the 
discerned person ; for it is no matter, save in 
degree of mischief, to what office a man is 
appointed, if he cannot fulfil it. 

122. III. Government by Council. 

This is the determination, by living autho- 
rity, of the national conduct to be observed 
under existing circumstances; and the modi- 
fication or enlargement, abrogation or enforce- 
ment, of the code of national law according to 
present needs or purposes. This government 
is necessarily always by council, for though 
the authority of it may be vested in one 
person, that person cannot form any opinion 
on a matter of public interest but by (volun- 
tarily or involuntarily) submitting himself to 
the influence of others. 

This government is always twofold — visible 
and invisible. 

The visible government is that which 



V. — GOVERNMENT. I 49 

nominally carries on the national business ; 
determines its foreign relations, raises taxes, 
levies soldiers, orders war or peace, and 
otherwise becomes the arbiter of the national 
fortune. The invisible government is that 
exercised by all energetic and intelligent men, 
each in his sphere, regulating the inner will 
and secret ways of the people, essentially 
forming its character, and preparing its fate. 

Visible governments are the toys of some 
nations, the diseases of others, the harness of 
some, the burdens of more, the necessity of 
all. Sometimes their career is quite distinct 
from that of the people, and to write it, 
as the national history, is as if one should 
number the accidents which befall a man's 
weapons and wardrobe, and call the list his 
biography. Nevertheless, a truly noble and 
wise nation necessarily has a noble and wise 
visible government, for its wisdom issues in 
that conclusively. 

123. Visible governments are, in their 
agencies, capable of three pure forms, and of 
no more than three. 

They are either monarchies, where the 
authority is vested in one person; oligarchies, 



150 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

when it is vested in a minority; or demo- 
cracies, when vested in a majority. 

But these three forms are not only, in 
practice, variously limited and combined, but 
capable of infinite difference in character and 
use, receiving specific names according to their 
variations ; which names, being nowise agreed 
upon, nor consistently used, either in thought 
or writing, no man can at present tell, in 
speaking of any kind of government, whether 
he is understood ; nor, in hearing, whether 
he understands. Thus we usually call a just 
government by one person a monarchy, and 
an unjust and cruel one, a tyranny: this might 
be reasonable if it had reference to the divinity 
of true government; but to limit the term 
*'ohgarchy" to government by a few rich 
people, and to call government by a few wise 
or noble people ^'aristocracy," evidently is 
absurd, unless it were proved that rich people 
never could be wise, or noble people rich; 
and farther absurd, because there* are other 
distinctions in character, as well as riches or 
wisdom (greater purity of race, or strength of 
purpose, for instance), which may give the 
power of government to the few. So that if 



V. — GOVERNMENT. I 5 I 

we had to give names to every group or kind 
of minority, we should have verbiage enough. 
But there is only one right name — '* oligarchy." 
124. So also the terms "republic" and 
" democracy " * are confused, especially in 
modern use; and both of them are liable to 
every sort of misconception. A repubhc means, 
properly, a polity in which the state, with its 
all, is at every man's service, and every man, 
with his all, at the state's service — (people are 
apt to lose sight of the last condition,) but its 
government may nevertheless be oligarchic 
(consular, or decemviral, for instance), or 
monarchic (dictatorial). But a democracy 
means a state in which the government rests 
directly with the majority of the citizens. 
And both these conditions have been judged 
only by such accidents and aspects of them as 
each of us has had experience of; and some- 
times both have been confused with anarchy, 
as it is the fashion at present to talk of the 
"failure of republican institutions in America/' 

[* I leave this paragraph, in every syllable, as it was 
written, during the rage of the American war ; it was meant 
to refer, however, chiefly to the Northerns : what modifi- 
cations its hot and partial terms require I will give in 
another place : let it stand here as it stood,] 



152 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

when there has never yet been in America any 
such thing as an institution, but only defiance 
of institution ; neither any such thing as a 
res-ptiblica, but only a multitudinous res- 
privata ; every man for himself. It is not 
republicanism which fails now in America; 
it is your model science of political economy, 
brought to its perfect practice. There you 
may see competition, and the ^' law of demand 
and supply " (especially in paper), in beautiful 
and unhindered operation.'' Lust of wealth, 
and trust in it; vulgar faith in magnitude 
and multitude, instead of nobleness ; besides 
that faith natural to backwoods-men — *' lucum 
ligna," •\ — perpetual self-contemplation issu- 
ing in passionate vanity; total ignorance of 
the finer and higher arts, and of all that they 
teach and bestow ; and the discontent of ener- 
getic minds unoccupied, frantic with hope of 

* Supply and demand ! Alas ! for what noble work was 
there ever any audible "demand" in that poor sense (Past 
and Present)? Nay, the demand is not loud, even for 
ignoble work. See "Average Earnings of Betty Taylor," 
in Times of 4th February of this year [1863]: "Worked 
from Monday morning at 8 A.M. to Friday night at 5.30 r.M. 
for \s 5^^." — Lai s s ez f aire. [This kind of slavery finds no 
Abolitionists that I hear of.] 

[t "That the sacred grove is nothing but logs."] 



V. GOVERNMENT. I 5 3 

uncomprehended change, and progress they 
know not whither ; * — these are the things that 
have ''failed" in America; and yet not alto- 
gether failed — it is not collapse, but coUision ; 
the greatest railroad accident on record, with fire 
caught from the furnace, and Catiline's quench- 
ing '*non aqua, sed ruina."f But I see not, 
in any of our talk of them, justice enough done 
to their erratic strength of purpose, nor any 
estimate taken of the strength of endurance of 
domestic sorrow, in what their women and 
children suppose a righteous cause. And out 

* Ames, by report of Waldo Emerson, says "that a 
monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will 
sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom ; whilst 
a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your 
feet are always in the water." Yes, that is comfortable; 
and though your raft cannot sink (being too worthless for 
that), it may go 1 1 pieces, I suppose, when the four winds 
(your only pilots) steer competitively from its four corners, 
and carry it, cbs oirojpLvbs Boperjs (poperjatu aKavdas, and then 
more than your feet will be in the water, 

[t "Not with water, but with ruin." The worst ruin 
being that which the Americans chiefly boast of. They 
sent all their best and honestest youths, Harvard University 
men and the like, to that accursed war ; got them nearly all 
shot; wrote pretty biographies (to the ages of 17, 18, 19) 
and epii^-phs for them ; and so, having washed all the salt 
out of the nation in blood, left themselves to putrefaction, 
and the morality of New York.] 



154 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

of that endurance and suffering, its own fruit 
will be born with time; [not aboHtion of 
slavery, however. See § 130] and Carlyle's 
prophecy of them (June, 1850), as it has now 
come true in the first clause, will, in the last : — 

''America, too, will find that caucuses, 
division-lists, stump-oratory, and speeches to 
Buncombe will not carry men to the immortal 
gods ; that the Washington Congress, and con- 
stitutional battle of Kilkenny cats is there, as 
here, naught for such objects ; quite incom- 
petent for such ; and, in fine, that said suMime 
constitutional arrangement will require to be 
(with terrible throes, and travail such as few 
expect yet) remodelled, abridged, extended, 
suppressed, torn asunder, put together again; 
— not without heroic labour and effort, quite 
other than that of the stump-orator and the 
revival preacher, one day." 

125.* Understand, then, once for all, that no 
form of government, provided it be a govern- 
ment at all, is, as such, to be either condemned 
or praised, or contested for in anywise, but by 
fools. But all forms of government are good 
just so far as they attain this one vital 
[* This paragraph contains the gist of all that precede.] 



V. GOVERNMENT. 15 5 

necessity of policy — that the wise and kind, 
few or many, shall govern the unwise and un- 
kind ; and they are evil so far as they miss of 
this, or reverse it. Nor does the form, in any 
case, signify one whit, but its firmness^ and 
adaptation to the need; for if there be many 
foolish persons in a state, and few wise, then 
it is good that the few govern ; and if there be 
many wise, and few foolish, then it is good 
that the many govern ; and if many be wise, 
yet one wiser, then it is good that one should 
govern ; and so on. Thus, we may have '' the 
ant's republic^ and the realm of bees," both 
good in their kind ; one for groping, and the 
other for building ; and nobler still, for flying ; 
— the Ducal monarchy "^ of those 

Intelligent of seasons, that set forth 
The aery caravan, high over seas. 

126. Nor need we want examples, among 
the inferior creatures, of dissoluteness, as well 

[* Whenever you are puzzled by any apparently mistaken 
use of words in these essays, take your dictionary, re- 
membering I had to fix terms, as well as principles. A 
Duke is a " dux" or " leader ; " the flying wedge of cranes 
is under a " ducal moi.arch " — a very different personage 
from a queen-bee. The Venetians, with a beautiful instinct, 
gave the name to their King of the Sea. ] 



1^6 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

as resoluteness, in government. I once saw 
democracy finely illustrated by the beetles of 
North Switzerland, who by universal suffrage, 
and elytric acclamation, one May twilight, 
carried it, that they would fly over the Lake of 
Zug ; and flew s/tort, to the great disfigurement 
of the Lake of Zug, — KavOdpov Xifi'^v — over 
some leagues square, and to the close of the 
cockchafer democracy for that year. Then, 
for tyranny, the old fable of the frogs and the 
stork finely touches one form of it ; but truth 
will image it more closely than fable, for 
tyranny is not complete when it is only over 
the idle, but when it is over the laborious and 
the blind. This description . of pelicans and 
climbing perch, which I find quoted in one 
of our popular natural histories, out of Sir 
Emerson Tennant's Ceylon, comes as near as 
may be to the true image of the thing : — 

'' Heavy rains came on, and as we stood on 
the high ground, we observed a pelican on the 
margin of the shallow pool gorging himself; 
our people went towards him, and raised a cry 
of ' Fish, fish ! ' We hurried down, and found 
numbers of fish struggling upward through the 
grass, in the rills formed by the trickling of the 



V. GOVERNMENT. 15/ 

rain. There was scarcely water to cover them, 
but nevertheless they made rapid progress up 
the bank, on which our followers collected 
about two baskets of them. They were 
forcing their way up the knoll, and had they 
not been interrupted, first by the pelican, and 
afterwards by ourselves, they would in a few 
minutes have gained the highest point, and 
descended on the other side into a pool which 
formed another portion of the tank. In going 
this distance, however, they must have used 
muscular exertion enough to have taken them 
half a mile on level ground ; for at these places 
all the cattle and wild animals of the neighbour- 
hood had latterly come to drink, so that the 
surface was everywhere indented with foot- 
marks, in addition to the cracks in the sur- 
rounding baked mud, into which the fish 
tumbled in their progress. In those holes, 
which were deep, and the sides perpendicular, 
they remained to die, and were carried off by 
kites and crows." * 

[* This is a perfect picture of the French under the 
tyrannies of their Pelican Kings, before the Revolution. But 
they must find other than Pelican Kings— or rather, Pelican 
Kings of the Divine brood, that feed their children, and with 
their best blood.] 



158 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

127. But whether governments be bad or 
good, one general disadvantage seems to attach 
to them in modern times — that they are all 
costly. "^ This, however, is not essentially the 
fault of the governments. If nations choose 
to play at war, they will always find their 
governments willing to lead the game, and 
soon coming under that term of Aristophanes, 
''Kami]koi aG'Kihwv^' ^' shield- sellers." And 
when (tt?)//,' eVl TTr^fiari •\) the shields take the 
form of iron ships, with apparatus ^' for 
defence against liquid fire,"-^as I see by latest 
accounts they are now arranging the decks in 
English dockyards — they become costly biers 
enough for the grey convoy of chief-mourner 
waves, wreathed with funereal foam, to bear 
back the dead upon; the massy shoulders of 
those corpse-bearers being intended for quite 
other work, and to bear the living, and food 
for the living, if we would let them. 

128. Nor have we the least right to complain 

[* Read carefully, from this point ; because here begins 
the statement of things requiring to be done, which I am 
now re-trying to make definite in Fors Clavigera.'\ 

[t "Evil on the top of Evil." Delphic oracle, meaning 
iron on the anvil.] 



V. GOVERNMENT. I 59 

of our governments being expensive, so long 
as we set the government to do precisely the 
work which brings no rettirn. If our present 
doctrines of political economy be just, let us 
trust them to the utmost; take that war 
business out of the government's hands, and 
test therein the principles of supply and 
demand. Let our future sieges of Sebastopol 
be done by contract — no capture, no pay — (I 
admit that things might sometimes go better 
so) ; and let us sell the commands of our pro- 
spective battles, with our vicarages, to the 
lowest bidder ; so may we have cheap victories, 
and divinity. On the other hand, if we have 
so much suspicion of our science that we dare 
not trust it on military or spiritual business, 
would it not be but reasonable to try whether 
some authoritative handHng may not prosper 
in matters utilitarian ? If we were to set our 
governments to do useful things instead, of 
mischievous, possibly even the apparatus itself 
might in time come to be less costly. The 
machine, applied to the building of the house, 
might perhaps pay, when it seems not to pay, 
appHed to pulling it down. If we made in 
our dockyards ships to carry timber and coals. 



l60 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

instead of cannon, and with provision for the 
brightening of domestic soHd cuhnary fire, 
instead of for the scattering of hquid hostile 
fire, it might have some effect on the taxes. 
Or suppose that we tried the experiment on 
land instead of water carriage; already the 
government, not unapproved, carries letters 
and parcels for us; larger packages may in 
time follow; — even general merchandise — why 
not, at last, ourselves ? Had the money spent 
in local mistakes and vain private litigation, on 
the railroads of England, been laid out, instead, 
under proper government restraint, on really 
useful railroad work, and had no absurd ex- 
pense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we 
might already have had, — what ultimately it 
will be found we must have, — quadruple rails, 
two for passengers, and two for traffic, on 
every great line ; and we might have been 
carried in swift safety, and watched and 
warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the 
present fares. [For, of course, a railroad 
company is merely an association of turnpike- 
keepers, who make the tolls as high as they 
can, not to mend the roads with, but to pocket. 
The public will in time discover this, and do 



V. — GOVERNMENT. I 6 I 

away with turnpikes on railroads, as on all 
other public- ways.] 

129. Suppose it should thus turn out, finally, 
that a true government set to true work, in- 
stead of being a costly engine, was a paying 
one ? that your government, rightly organized, 
instead of itself subsisting by an income-tax, 
would produce its subjects some subsistence 
in the shape of an income dividend ? — police, 
and judges duly paid besides, only with less 
work than the state at present provides for 
them. 

A true government set to true work ! — Not 
easily to be imagined, still less obtained ; but 
not beyond human hope or ingenuity. Only 
you will have to alter your election systems 
somewhat, first. Not by universal suffrage, 
nor by votes purchaseable with beer, is such 
government to be had. That is to say, not by 
universal equal suffrage. Every man upwafds 
of twenty, who had been convicted of no legal 
crime, should have his say in this matter ; but 
afterwards a louder voice, as he grows older, 
and approves himself wiser. If he has one 
vote at twenty, he should have two at thirty, 
four at forty, ten at fifty. For every single 



1 62 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

vote which he has with an income of a 
hundred a year, he should have ten with an 
income of a thousand, (provided you first see 
to it that wealth is, as nature intended it to be, 
the reward of sagacity and industry — not of 
good luck in a scramble or a lottery). For 
every single vote which he had as subordinate 
in any business, he should have two when he 
became a master ; and every office and autho- 
rity nationally bestowed, implying trustworthi- 
ness and intellect, should have its known 
proportional number of votes attached to it. 
But into the detail and working of a true 
system in these matters we cannot now enter ; 
we are concerned as yet with definitions only, 
and statements of first principles, which will 
be established now sufficiently for our pur- 
poses when we have examined the nature 
of that form of government last on the list 
in § 105, — the purely ^'Magistral," exciting at 
present its full share of public notice, under 
its ambiguous title of ^' slavery." 

130. I have not, however, been able to 
ascertain in definite terms, from the declaim- 
ers against slavery, what they understand by 
it. If they mean only the imprisonment or 



V. GOVERNMENT. I 63 

compulsion of one person by another, such 
imprisonment or compulsion being in many 
cases highly expedient, slavery, so defined, 
would be no evil in itself, but only in its 
abuse ; that is, when men are slaves, who 
should not be, or masters, who should not be, 
or even the fittest characters for either state, 
placed in it under conditions which should not 
be. It is not, for instance, a necessary con- 
dition of slavery, nor a desirable one, that 
parents should be separated from children, or 
husbands from wives ; but the institution of 
war, against which people declaim with less 
violence, effects such separations, — not un- 
frequently in a very permanent manner. To 
press a sailor, seize a white youth by con- 
scription for a soldier, or carry off a black one 
for a labourer, may all be right acts or all 
wrong ones, according to needs and circum- 
stances. It is wrong to scourge a man 
unnecessarily. So it is to shoot him. Both 
must be done on occasion ; and it is better and 
kinder to flog a man to his work, than to leave 
him idle till he robs, and flog him afterwards. 
The essential thing for all creatures is to be 
made to do right ; how they are made to do it 



,164 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

— by pleasant promises, or hard necessities, 
pathetic oratory, or the whip — is comparatively 
immaterial."^ To be deceived is perhaps as 
incompatible with human dignity as to be 
whipped; and I suspect the last method to be 
not the worst, for the help of many individuals. 
The Jewish nation throve under it, in the hand 
of a monarch reputed not unwise; it is only 
the change of whip for scorpion which is 
inexpedient ; and that change is as likely to 
come to pass on the side of license as of law. 
For the true scorpion whips are those of the 
nation's pleasant vices, which are to it as St. 
John's locusts — crown on the head, ravin in 
the mouth, and sting in the tail. If it will not 
bear the rule of Athena and Apollo, who 
shepherd without smiting (ov TrXijyrj veiiovre^), 
Athena at last calls no more in the corners 
of the streets; and then follows the rule of 
Tisiphone, who smites without shepherding. 

131. If, however, by slavery, instead of 
absolute compulsion, is meant the purchase, by 
money, of the right of compulsion, such purchase 

[* Permit me to enforce and reinforce this statement, with 
all earnestness. It is the sum of what needs most to be 
understood, in the matter of education.] 



V. — GOVERNMENT I 65 

is necessarily made whenever a portion of any 
territory is transferred, for money, from one 
monarch to another : which has happened 
frequently enough in history, without its being 
supposed that the inhabitants of the districts 
so transferred became therefore slaves. In 
this, as in the former case, the dispute seems 
about the fashion of the thing, rather than the 
fact of it. There are two rocks in mid-sea, on 
each of which, neglected equally by instructive 
and commercial powers, a handful of inhabit- 
ants live as they may. Two merchants bid 
for the two properties, but not in the same 
terms. One bids for the people, buys thein^ 
and sets them to work, under pain of scourge ; 
the other bids for the rock, buys it, and throws 
the inhabitants into the sea. The former is 
the American, the latter the English method, 
of slavery; much is to be said for, and some- 
thing against, both, which I hope to say in due 
time and place.* 

132. If, however, slavery mean not merety 
the purchase of the right of compulsion, but 
the purchase of the body and soul of the creature 

[* A pregnant paragraph, meant against English and 
Scotch landlords who drive their people off the land.] 



1 66 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

itself for money, it is not, I think, among the 
black races that purchases of this kind are 
most extensively made, or that separate souls 
of a fine make fetch the highest price. This 
branch of the inquiry we shall have occasion 
also to follow out at some length, for in the 
worst instances of the selling of souls, we are 
apt to get, when we ask if the sale is valid, 
only Pyrrhon's answer* — ''None can know." 

133. The fact is that slavery is not a politi- 
cal institution at all, but an inherent^ natural, 
and eternal inheritance of a large portion of 
the human race — to whom, the more you give 
of their own free will, the more slaves they 
will make themselves. In common parlance, 
we idly confuse captivity with slavery, and are 
always thinking of the difference between pine- 
trunks (Ariel in the pine), and cowslip-bells 
(" in the cowsHp-bell I lie "), or between 
carrying wood and drinking (Caliban's slavery 
and freedom), instead of noting the far more 
serious differences between Ariel and Caliban 
themselves, and the means by which, practi- 
cally, that difference may be brought about or 
diminished. 

[* In Lucian's dialogue, "The sale of lives."] 



V. GOVERNMENT. 16/ 

134.* Plato's slave, in the Polity^ who, well 
dressed and washed, aspires to the hand of 
his master's daughter, corresponds curiously 
to Caliban attacking Prospero's cell ; and there 
is an undercurrent of meaning throughout, in 
the Tempest as well as in the Merchant of 
Venice ; referring in this case to govern- 
ment, as in that to commerce. Miranda t 

[* I raise this analysis of the Tempest into my text ; but 
it is nothing but a hurried note, which I may never have 
time to expand. I have retouched it here and there a little, 
however.] 

t Of Shakspeare's names I will afterwards speak at more 
length: they are curiously — often barbarously — much by 
Providence, — but assuredly not without Shakspeare's cunning 
purpose — mixed out of the various traditions he confusedly 
adopted, and languages which he imperfectly knew. Three 
of the clearest in meaning have been already noticed, 
Desdemona, " SucrSatyUoi/ta,'' "miserable fortune," is also 
plain enough. Othello is, I believe, " the careful ; " all 
the calamity of the tragedy arising from the single flaw and 
error in his magnificently collected strength. Ophelia, 
"serviceableness," the true lost wife of Hamlet, ismarked 
as having a Greek name by that of her brother, Laertes ; 
and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to in that 
brother's last word of her, where her gentle preciousness 
is opposed to the uselessness of the churlish clergy— "A 
ministering angel shall my sister be, when thou liest 
howling." Hamlet is, I believe, connected in some way with 
"homely," the entire event of the tragedy turning on be- 
trayal of home duty. Hermione {epfj-a), "pillar-like " {7? eUos 
e'xe xpv<^V^ 'AcppodiTTjs). Titania {Tirrivf]), "the queen;" 



I 68 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

(" the wonderful," so addressed first by 
Ferdinand, " Oh, you wonder ! ") corresponds 
to Homer's Arete : Ariel and Caliban are 
respectively the spirits of faithful and imagina- 
tive labour, opposed to rebellious, hurtful, and 
slavish labour. Prospero ('' for hope "), a 
true governor, is opposed to Sycorax, the 
mother of slavery, her name ^' Swine-raven " 
indicating at once brutality and deathfulness ; 
hence the Hne — 

"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed with 
raveii s feather ^'^ — etc. 

For all these dreams of Shakspeare, as those 
of true and strong men must be, are ^^ ^avraa- 
fjuara Oela, koX gkloX tmv ovtmv " — divine 
phantasms, and shadows of things that are. 
We hardly tell our children, willingly, a fable 
with no purport in it ; yet we think God sends 
his best messengers only to sing fairy tales to 

Benedict and Beatrice, "blessed and blessing;" Valentine 
and Proteus, enduring (or strong), (valens), and changeful, 
lago and lachimo have evidently the same root — probably 
the Spanish lago, Jacob, "the supplanter." Leonatus, and 
other such names, are interpreted, or played with, in the 
plays themselves. For the interpretation of Sycorax, and 
reference to her raven's feather, I am indebted to Mr. John 
R, Wise. 



~ V. GOVERNMENT. I 69 

US, fond and empty. The Tempest is just like 
a grotesque in a rich missal, "■ clasped where 
paynims pray." Ariel is the spirit of generous 
and free-hearted service, in early stages of 
human society oppressed by ignorance and 
wild tyranny : venting groans as fast as mill- 
wheels strike; in shipwreck of states, dread- 
ful; so that ''all but mariners plunge in the 
brine, and quit the vessel, then all afire with 
me!' yet having in itself the will and sweet- 
ness of truest peace, whence that is especially 
called "Ariel's" song, "Come unto these 
yellow sands, and there, take hands, courtesied 
when you have, and kissed, the wild waves 
whist:" (mind, it is " cortesia," not "curt- 
sey,") and read " quiet " for " whist," if you 
want the full sense. Then you may indeed 
foot it featly, and sweet spirits bear the bur- 
den for you — with watch in the night, and call 
in early morning. The vis viva in elemental 
transformation follows — "Full fathom five 
thy father Hes, of his bones are coral made." 
Then, giving rest after labour, it " fetches dew 
from the still vext Bermoothes, and, with a 
charm joined to their suffered labour, leaves 
men asleep." Snatching away the feast of 



I/O MUNERA PULVERIS. 

the cruel, it seems to them as a harpy; 
followed by the utterly vile, who cannot see 
it in any shape, but to whom it is the picture 
of nobody, it still gives shrill harmony to their 
false and mocking catch, " Thought is free ; " 
but leads them into briars and foul places, 
and at last hollas the hounds upon them. 
Minister of fate against the great criminal, 
it joins itself with the " incensed seas and 
shores" — the sword that layeth at it cannot 
hold, and may '^with bemocked-at stabs as 
soon kill the still-closing waters, as diminish 
one dowle that is in its plume." As the guide 
and aid of true love, it is always called by 
Prospero ''fine" (the French ''fine," not the 
English), or " delicate " — another long note 
would be needed to explain all the meaning 
in this word. Lastly, its work done, and 
war, it resolves itself into the elements. The 
intense significance of the last song, " Where 
the bee sucks," I will examine in its due place. 
The types of slavery in Caliban are more 
palpable, and need not be dwelt on now : 
though I will notice them also, severally, in 
their proper places ; — the heart of his slavery 
is in his worship : " That's a brave god, and 



V. — GOVERNMENT. I /I 

bears celestial — liquor." But, in illustration 
of the sense in which the Latin '^ benignus " 
and ''malignus" are to be coupled with 
Eleutheria and Douleia, note that Caliban's 
torment is always the physical reflection of 
his own nature — '^ cramps " and *' side stitches 
that shall pen thy breath up; thou shalt be 
pinched, as thick as honeycombs : " the whole 
nature of slavery being one cramp and 
cretinous contraction. Fancy this of Ariel! 
You may fetter him, but you set no mark on 
him; you may put him to hard work and far 
journey, but you cannot give him a cramp. 

135. I should dwell, even in these prefatory 
papers, at more length on this subject of 
slavery, had not all I would say been said 
already, in vain, (not, as I hope, ultimately in 
vain,) by Carlyle, in the first of the Latter- 
day Pamphlets, which I commend to the 
reader's gravest reading; together with that 
as much neglected, and still more immediately 
needed, on model prisons, and with the great 
chapter on ''Permanence" (fifth of the last 
section of '' Past and Present "), which sums 
what is known, and foreshadows, or rather 
forelights, all that is to be learned of National 



172 MUNERA PULVERIS, 

Discipline. I have only here farther to examine 
the nature of one world-wide and everlasting 
form of slavery, wholesome in use, as deadly 
in abuse; — the service of the rich by the 
poor. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MASTERSHIP 

136. As in all previous discussions of our 
subject, we must study the relation of the 
commanding rich to the obeying poor in its 
simplest elements, in order to reach its first 
principles. 

The simplest state of it, then, is this : ^ a 
wise and provident person works much, con- 
sumes little, and lays by a store ; an improvi- 
dent person works little, consumes all his 
produce, and lays by no store. Accident 
interrupts the daily work, or renders it less 
productive ; the idle person must then starve 
or be supported by the provident one, who, 
having him thus at his mercy, may either 

* In the present general examination I concede so much 
to ordinary economists as to ignore all in7iocent poverty. 
I adapt my reasoning, for once, to the modern English 
practical mind, by assuming poverty to be always criminal ; 
the conceivable exceptions we will examine afterwards. 



174 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

refuse to maintain him altogether, or, which 
will evidently be more to his own interest, 
say to him, *' I will maintain you, indeed, 
but you shall now work hard, instead of in- 
dolently, and instead of being allowed to lay 
by what you save, as you might have done, 
had you remained independent, / will take 
all the surplus. You would not lay it up 
for yourself; it is wholly your own fault that 
has thrown you into my power, and I will 
force you to work, or starve; yet you shall 
have no profit of your work, only your daily 
bread for it ; [and competition shall determine 
how much of that ■^]." This mode of treatment 
has now become so universal that it is sup- 
posed to be the only natural — nay, the only 
possible one ; and the market wages are 
calmly defined by economists as " the sum 
which will maintain the labourer." 

137. The power of the provident person to 
do this is only checked by the correlative 
power of some neighbour of similarly frugal 

[* I have no terms of English, and can find none in Greek 
nor Latin, nor in any other strong language known to me, 
contemptuous enough to attack the bestial idiotism of the 
modern theory that wages are to be measured by com- 
petition.] 



VI. — MASTERSHIP. I J 5 

habits, who says to the labourer — '^ I will give 
you a httle more than this other provident 
person : come and work for me." 

The power of the provident over the im- 
provident depends thus, primarily, on their 
relative numbers; secondarily, on the modes 
of agreement of the adverse parties with each 
other. The accidental level of wages is a 
variable function of the number of provident 
and idle persons in the world, of the enmity 
between them as classes, and of the agree- 
ment between those of the same class. // 
depends^ from beginning to endy on moral con- 
ditions. 

138. Supposing the rich to be entirely selfish, 
it is always for their interest that the poor sJioidd 
be as numerous as they can employ , and restrain. 
For, granting that the entire population is no 
larger than the ground can easily maintain — 
that the classes are stringently divided — and 
that there is sense or strength of hand enough 
with the rich to secure obedience; then, if 
nine-tenths of a nation are poor, the remaining 
tenth have the service of nine persons each ; ^ 

* I say nothing yet of the quahty of the servants, which, 
nevertheless, is the gist of the business. Will you have Paul 



176 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

but, if eight-tenths are poor, only of four each ; 
if seven-tenths are poor, of two and a third 
each ; if six-tenths are poor, of one and a 
half each ; and if five-tenths are poor, of only 
one each. But, practically, if the rich strive 
always to obtain more power over the poor, 
instead of to raise them — and if, on the other 
hand, the poor become continually more vicious 
and numerous, through neglect and oppression, 
— though the range of the power of the rich 
increases, its tenure becomes less secure; 
until, at last, the measure of iniquity being 
full, revolution, civil war, or the subjection of 
the state to a healthier or stronger one, closes 
the moral corruption, and industrial disease.^ 

139. It is rarely, however, that things come 
to this extremity. Kind persons among the 
rich, and wise among the poor, modify the 
connexion of the classes; the efforts made to 



Veronese to paint your ceiling, or the plumber from over the 
way ? Both will work for the same money ; Paul, if any- 
thing, a little the cheaper of the two, if you keep him in 
good humour ; only you have to discern him first, which will 
need eyes. 

[* I have not altered a syllable in these three paragraphs, 
^11^ 1385 139? on revision; but have much italicised: the 
principles stated being as vital, as they are little known.] 



VI. MASTERSHIP. I 7/ 

raise and relieve on the one side, and the 
success of honest toil on the other, bind and 
blend the orders of society into the confused 
tissue of half-felt obligation, sullenly-rendered 
obedience, and variously-directed, or mis- 
directed, toil, which form the warp of daily life. 
But this great law rules all the wild design : 
that success (while society is guided by laws 
of competition) signifies always so viuch victory 
over your 7ieigJibotir as to obtain the direction 
of his work, and to take the profits of it. This 
is the real source of all great riches. No man 
can become largely rich by his personal toil.* 
The work of his own hands, wisely directed, 
will indeed always maintain himself and his 
family, and make fitting provision for his age. 
But it is only by the discovery of some method of 
taxing the labour of others that he can become 
optdent. Every increase of his capital enables 
him to extend this taxation more widely ; that 
is, to invest larger funds in the maintenance of 
labourers,— to direct, accordingly, vaster and 

* By his art he may ; but only when its produce, or the 
sight or hearing of it, becomes a subject of dispute, so as to 
enable the artist to tax the labour of multitudes highly, in 
exchange for his own. 

M 



178 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

yet vaster masses of labour, and to appropriate 
its profits. 

140. There is much confusion of idea on the 
subject of this appropriation. It is, of course, 
the interest of the employer to disguise it from 
the persons employed ; and, for his own 
comfort and complacency, he often desires no 
less to disguise it from himself. And it is 
matter of much doubt with me, how far the 
foul and foolish arguments used habitually on 
this subject are indeed the honest expression 
of foul and foolish convictions ; — or rather (as 
I am sometimes forced to conclude from the 
irritation with which they are advanced) are 
resolutely dishonest, wilful, and malicious 
sophisms, arranged so as to mask, to the last 
moment, the real laws of economy, and future 
duties of men. By taking a simple example, 
and working it thoroughly out, the subject may 
be rescued from all but such determined mis- 
representation. 

141. Let us imagine a society of peasants, 
living on a river-shore, exposed to destructive 
inundation at somewhat extended intervals; 
and that each peasant possesses of this good, 
but imperilled, ground, more than he needs to 



VI. — MASTERSHIP. 1/9 

cultivate for immediate subsistence. We will 
assume farther (and with too great probabiHty 
of justice), that the greater part of them indo- 
lently keep in tillage just as much land as sup- 
plies them with daily food; — that they leave 
their children idle, and take no precautions 
against the rise of the stream. But one of 
them, (we will say but one, for the sake of 
greater clearness) cultivates carefully all the 
ground of his estate ; makes his children work 
hard and healthily; uses his spare time and 
theirs in building a rampart against the river ; 
and, at the end of some years, has in his store- 
houses large reserves of food and clothing, — in 
his stables a well-tended breed of cattle, and 
around his fields a wedge of wall against flood. 
The torrent rises at last — sweeps away the 
harvests, and half the cottages of the careless 
peasants, and leaves them destitute. They 
naturally come for help to the provident one, 
whose fields are unwasted, and whose grana- 
ries are full. He has the right to refuse it to 
them: no one disputes this right.* But he will 

[* Observe this ; the legal right to keep what you have 
worked for, and use it as you please, is the corner-stone of 
all economy : compare the end of Chap. II.] 



l80 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

probably not refuse it ; it is not his interest to 
do so, even were he entirely selfish and cruel. 
The only question with him will be on what 
terms his aid is to be granted. 

142. Clearly, not on terms of mere charity. 
To maintain his neighbours in idleness would 
be not only his ruin, but theirs. He will 
require work from them, in exchange for their 
maintenance; and, whether in kindness or 
cruelty, all the work they can give. Not now 
the three or four hours they were wont to 
spend on their own land, but the eight or ten 
hours they ought to have spent.* But how 
will he apply this labour ? The men are now 
his slaves ; — nothing less, and nothing more. 
On pain of starvation, he can force them to 
work in the manner, and to the end, he chooses. 
And it is by his wisdom in this choice that 
the worthiness of his mastership is proved, or 
its unworthiness. Evidently, he must first set 
them to bank out the water in some temporary 
way, and to get their ground cleansed and 
resown ; else, in any case, their continued 
maintenance will be impossible. That done, 

[* I should now put the time of necessary labour rather 
under than over the third of the day.] 



VI. MASTERSHIP. I 8 I 

and while he has still to feed them, suppose he 
makes them raise a secure rampart for their 
own ground against all future flood, and rebuild 
their houses in safer places, with the best 
material they can find; being allowed time out 
of their working hours to fetch such material 
from a distance. And for the food and cloth- 
ing advanced, he takes security in land that as 
much shall be returned at a convenient period. 

143. We may conceive this security to be 
redeemed, and the debt paid at the end of a 
few years. The prudent peasant has sus- 
tained no loss ; but is no richer than he was^ 
and has had all his trouble for nothing. But 
he has enriched his neighbours materially; 
bettered their houses, secured their land, and 
rendered them, in worldly matters, equal to 
himself. In all rational and final sense, he has 
been throughout their true Lord and King. 

144. We will next trace his probable fine 
of conduct, presuming his object to be exclu- 
sively the increase of his own fortune. After 
roughly recovering and cleansing the ground, 
he allows the ruined peasantry only to build 
huts upon it, such as he thinks protective 
enough from the weather to keep them in 



I 82 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

working health. The rest of their time he 
occupies, first in pulling down, and rebuilding 
on a magnificent scale, his own house, and in 
adding large dependencies to it. This done, 
in exchange for his continued supply of corn, 
he buys as much of his neighbours' land as 
he thinks he can superintend the management 
of; and makes the former owners securely 
embank and protect the ceded portion. By 
this arrangement, he leaves to a certain 
number of the peasantry only as much ground 
as will just maintain them in their existing 
numbers ; as the population increases, he takes 
the extra hands, who cannot be maintained on 
the narrowed estates, for his own servants; 
employs some to cultivate the ground he has 
bought, giving them of its produce merely 
enough for subsistence ; with the surplus, 
which, under his energetic and careful superin- 
tendence, will be large, he maintains a train 
of servants for state, and a body of workmen, 
whom he educates in ornamental arts. He 
now can splendidly decorate his house, lay out 
its grounds magnificently, and richly supply 
his table, and that of his household and 
retinue. And thus, without any abuse of right. 



VI. MASTERSHIP. I 8 3 

we should find established all the phenomena 
of poverty and riches, which (it is supposed 
necessarily) accompany modern civilization. 
In one part of the district, we should have 
unhealthy land, miserable dwellings, and half- 
starved poor ; in another, a well-ordered 
estate, well-fed servants, and refined conditions 
of highly-educated and luxurious life. 

145. I have put the two cases in simphcity, 
and to some extremity. But though in more 
complex and quahfied operation, all the 
relations of society are but the expansion of 
these two typical sequences of conduct and 
result. I do not say, observe, that the first 
procedure is entirely recommendable ; or even 
entirely right; still less, that the second is 
wholly wrong. Servants, and artists, and 
splendour of habitation and retinue, have all 
their use, propriety, and office. But I am 
determined that the reader shall understand 
clearly what they cost; and see that the con- 
dition of having them is the subjection to us 
of a certain number of imprudent or unfortu- 
nate persons (or, it may be, more fortunate 
than their masters), over whose destinies we 
exercise a boundless control. '^ Riches " mean 



184 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

eternally and essentially this; and God send 
at last a time when those words of our best- 
reputed economist shall be true, and we sliall 
indeed '' all know what it is to be rich ; " * that 
it is to be slave-master over farthest earth, and 
over all ways and thoughts of men. Every 
operative you employ is your true servant : 
distant or near, subject to your immediate 
orders, or ministering to your widely-communi- 
cated caprice, — for the pay he stipulates, or 
the price he tempts, — ail are alike under this 
great dominion of the gold. The milliner who 
makes the dress is as much a servant (more 
so, in that she uses more intelligence in the 
service) as the maid who puts it on ; the 
carpenter who smooths the door, as the foot- 
man who opens it ; the tradesmen who supply 
the table, as the labourers and sailors who 
supply the tradesmen. Why speak of these 
lower services ? Painters and singers (whether 
of note or rhyme), jesters and story-tellers, 
moralists, historians, priests, — so far as these, 
in any degree, paint, or sing, or tell their tale, 
or charm their charm, or '' perform " their rite, 
for pay ^ — in so far, they are all slaves; abject 
[* See Preface to Unto this Last.] 



VI. — -MASTERSHIP, I 8 5 

utterly, if the service be for pay only ; abject 
less and less in proportion to the degrees of 
love and of wisdom which enter into their 
duty, or can enter into it, according as their 
function is to do the bidding and the work of 
a manly people ; — or to amuse, tempt, and 
deceive, a childish one. 

146. There is always, in such amusement 
and temptation, to a certain extent, a govern- 
ment of the rich by the poor, as of the poor 
by the rich; but the latter is the prevaiHng 
and necessary one, and it consists, when it is 
honourable, in the collection of the profits of 
labour from those who would have misused 
them, and the administration of those profits 
for the service either of the same persons in 
future, or of others ; and when it is dishonour- 
able, as is more frequently the case in modern 
times, it consists in the collection of the profits 
of labour from those who would have rightly 
used them, and their appropriation to the 
service of the collector himself. 

147. The examination of these various 
modes of collection and use of riches will form 
the third branch of our future inquiries ; but 
the key to the whole subject lies in the clear 



I 86 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

understanding of the difference between selfish 
and unselfish expenditure. It is not easy, by 
any course of reasoning, to enforce this on the 
generally unwilling hearer; yet the definition 
of unselfish expenditure is brief and simple. 
It is expenditure which, if you are a capitalist, 
does not pay you, but pays somebody else ; and 
if you are a consumer, does not please you, 
but pleases somebody else. Take one special 
instance, in further illustration of the general 
type given above. I did not invent that type, 
but spoke of a real river, and of real peasantry, 
the languid and sickly race which inhabits, or 
haunts — for they are often more like spectres 
than living men — the thorny desolation of the 
banks of the Arve in Savoy. Some years ago, 
a society, formed at Geneva, offered to embank 
the river for the ground which would have 
been recovered by the operation ; but the offer 
was refused by the (then Sardinian) govern- 
ment. The capitalists saw that this expendi- 
ture would have '^ paid " if the ground saved 
from the river was to be theirs. But if, when 
the offer that had this aspect of profit was 
refused, they had nevertheless persisted in the 
plan, and merely taking security for the return 



VI. MASTERSHIP. I 8/ 

of their outlay, lent the funds for the work, 
and thus saved a whole race of human souls 
from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I 
presume, some among them would, at personal 
risk, have dragged any one drowning creature 
out of the current of the stream, and not 
expected payment therefor), such expenditure 
would have precisely corresponded to the use 
of his power made, in the first instance, by our 
supposed richer peasant — it would have been the 
king's, of grace, instead of the usurer's, for gain. 

148. ''Impossible, absurd, Utopian!" exclaim 
nine-tenths of the few readers whom these 
words may find. 

No, good reader, tJiis is not Utopian : 
but I will tell you what would have seemed, 
if we had not seen it, Utopian on the side of 
evil instead of good ; that ever men should 
have come to value their money so much more 
than their lives, that if you call upon them to 
become soldiers, and take chance of a bullet 
through their heart, and of wife and children 
being left desolate, for their pride's sake, they 
will do it gaily, without thinking twice; but 
if you ask them, for their country's sake, to 
spend a hundred pounds without security of 



I 88 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

getting back a hundred-and-five,* they will 
laugh in your face. 

149. Not but that also this game of life- 
giving and taking is, in the end, somewhat 
more costly than other forms of play might 
be. Rifle practice is, indeed, a not unhealthy 
pastime, and a feather on the top of the head is 
a pleasing appendage ; but while learning the 
stops and fingering of the sweet instrument, 

* I have not hitherto touched on the subject of interest 
of money ; it is too complex, and must be reserved for its 
proper place in the body of the work. The definition of 
interest (apart from compensation for risk) is, "the exponent 
of the comfort of accomplished labour, separated from its 
power ; " the power being what is lent : and the French 
economists who have maintained the entire illegality of 
interest are wrong ; yet by no means so curiously or wildly 
wrong as the English and French ones opposed to them, 
whose opinions have been collected by Dr. Whewell at page 
41 of his Lectures ; it never seeming to occur to the mind of 
the compiler, any more than to the writers whom he quotes, that 
it is quite possible, and even (according to Jewish proverb) 
prudent, for men to hoard as ants and mice do, for use, not 
usury ; and lay by something for winter nights, in the 
expectation of rather sharing than lending the scrapings. 
My Savoyard squirrels would pass a pleasant time of it under 
the snow-laden pine-branches, if they always declined to 
economize because no one would pay them interest on nuts. 

[I leave this note as it stood : but, as I have above stated, 
should now side wholly with the French economists spoken 
of, in asserting the absolute illegality of interest.] 



VI. MASTERSHIP. I 89 

does no one ever calculate the cost of an over- 
ture ? What melody does Tityrus meditate 
on his tenderly spiral pipe ? The leaden seed 
of it, broad-cast, true conical " Dents de Lion " 
seed — needing less allowance for the wind 
than is usual with that kind of herb — what 
crop are you likely to have of it ? Suppose, 
instead of this volunteer marching and counter- 
marching, you were to do a Httle volunteer 
ploughing and counter-ploughing ? It is more 
difficult to do it straight : the dust of the 
earth, so disturbed, is more grateful than for 
merely rhythmic footsteps. Golden cups, also, 
given for good ploughing, would be more 
suitable in colour: (ruby glass, for the wine 
which ''giveth his colour" on the ground, 
might be fitter for the rifle prize in ladies' 
hands). Or, conceive a Httle volunteer exer- 
cise with the spade, other than such as is 
needed for moat and breastwork, or even for 
the burial of the fruit of the laden avena-seed, 
subject to the -shrill Lemures' criticism — 

Wer hat das Haus so schlecht gebeaut ? 

If you were to embank Lincolnshire more 
stoutly against the sea ? or strip the peat of 



IQO MUNERA PULVERIS. 

Solway, or plant Plinlimmon moors with larch 
— then, in due season, some amateur reaping 
and threshing ? 

" Nay, we reap and thresh by steam, in 
these advanced days." 

I know it, my wise and economical friends. 
The stout arms God gave you to win your 
bread by, you would fain shoot your neigh- 
bours, and God's sweet singers with;* then 

^' Compare Chaucer's feeling respecting birds (from Canace's 
falcon, to the nightingale, singing, ' ' Domine, labia — " to the 
Lord of Love) with the usual modern British sentiments on 
this subject. Or even Cowley's : — 

' ' What prince's choir of music can excel 
That which within this shade does dwell, 
To which we nothing pay, or give, 
They, like all other poets, live 

Without reward, or thanks for their obliging pains ! 
'Tis well if they become not prey." 

Yes ; it is better than well ; particularly since the seed 
sown by the wayside has been protected by the peculiar 
appropriation of part of the church-rates in our country 
parishes. See the remonstrance from a " Country Parson," 
in The Times of June 4th (or 5th ; the letter is dated June 
3rd), 1862: — "I have heard at a vestry meeting a good 
deal of higgling over a few shillings' outlay in cleaning the 
church ; but I have never heard any dissatisfaction expressed 
on account of that part of the rate which is invested in 50 
or 100 dozens of birds' heads." 

[If we could trace the innermost of all causes of modern 



VI. MASTERSHIP. I 9 I 

you invoke the fiends to your farm-service; 
and — 

When young and old come forth to play 

Oil a sulphurous hohday, 

Tell how the darkling goblin sweat 

(His feast of cinders duly set), 

And, belching night, where breathed the morn, 

His shadowy tiail hath threshed the corn 

That ten day-labourers could not end. 

150. Going back to the matter in hand 
we will press the example closer. On a green 
knoll above that plain of the Arve, between 
Cluse and Bonneville, there was, in the year 
i860, a cottage, inhabited by a well-doing 
family — man and wife, three children, and 
the grandmother. I call it a cottage, but in 
truth, it was a large chimney on the ground, 
wide at the bottom, so that the family might 
live round the fire ; lighted by one small 
broken window, and entered by an unclosing 
door. The family, I say, was '' well-doing ; " 
at least, it was hopeful and cheerful; the 
wife healthy, the children, for Savoyards, 

war, I believe it would be found, not in the avarice nor 
ambition of nations, but in the mere idleness of the upper 
classes. They have nothing to do but to teach the peasantry 
to kill each other.] 



192 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

pretty and active, but the husband threatened 
with decline, from exposure under the cHffs 
of the Mont Vergi by day, and to draughts 
between every plank of his chimney in the 
frosty nights. 

'' Why could he not plaster the chinks ? " 
asks the practical reader. For the same 
reason that your child cannot wash its face 
and hands till you have washed them many 
a day for it, and will not wash them when it 
can, till you force it. 

151. I passed this cottage often in my 
walks, had its window and door mended; 
sometimes mended also a Httle the meal of sour 
bread and broth, and generally got kind greet- 
ing and smile from the face of young or old ; 
which greeting, this year, narrowed itself into 
the half- recognising stare of the elder child, 
and the old woman's tears ; for the father 
and mother were both dead, — one of sickness, 
the other of sorrow. It happened that I passed 
not alone, but with a companion, a practised 
English joiner, who, while these people were 
dying of cold, had been employed from six 
in the morning to six in the evening, for two 
months, in fitting, without nails, the panels 



VI. MASTERSHIP. J 93 

of a single door in a large house in London. 
Three days of his work taken, at the right 
time, from fastening the oak panels with 
useless precision, and applied to fasten the 
larch timbers with decent strength, would 
have saved these Savoyards' lives. He would 
have been maintained equally; (I suppose 
him equally paid for his work by the owner 
of the greater house, only the work not con- 
sumed selfishly on his own walls;) and the 
two peasants, and eventually, probably their 
children, saved. 

152. There are, therefore, — let me finally 
enforce, and leave with the reader, this broad 
conclusion, — three thin-gs to be considered in 
employing any poor person. It is not enough 
to give him employment. You must employ 
him first to produce useful things ; secondly, of 
the several (suppose equally useful) things he 
can equally well produce, you must set him to 
make that which will cause him to lead the 
healthiest life ; lastly, of the things produced, it 
remains a question of wisdom and conscience 
how much you are to take yourself, and how 
much to leave to others. A large quantity, 
remember, unless you destroy it, must always 

N 



194 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

be so left at one time or another; the only 
questions you have to decide are, not zvhat you 
will give, but when, and hoWy and to whoiUy you 
will give. The natural law of human life is, of 
course, that in youth a man shall labour and 
lay by store for his old age, and when age 
comes, shall use what he has laid by, gradually 
slackening his toil, and allowing himself more 
frank use of his store ; taking care always to 
leave himself as much as will surely suffice for 
him beyond any possible length of life. What 
he has gained, or by tranquil and unanxious 
toil continues to gain, more than is enough for 
his own need, he ought so to administer, while 
he yet lives, as to see the good of it again 
beginning, in other hands; for thus he has 
himself the greatest sum of pleasure from it, 
and faithfully uses his sagacity in its control. 
Whereas most men, it appears, dislike the 
sight of their fortunes going out into service 
again, and say to themselves, — '^ I can indeed 
nowise prevent this money from falling at last 
into the hands of others, nor hinder the good 
of it from becoming theirs, not mine ; but at 
least let a merciful death save me from being a 
witness of their satisfaction ; and may God so 



VI. — MASTERSHIP. I Q 5 

far be gracious to me as to let no good come of 
any of this money of mine before my eyes." 

153. Supposing this feeling unconquerable, 
the safest way of rationally indulging it would 
be for the capitaHst at once to spend all his 
fortune on himself, which might actually, in 
many cases, be quite the rightest as well as the 
pleasantest thing to do, if he had just tastes 
and worthy passions. But, whether for him- 
self only, or through the hands, and for the 
sake of others also, the law of wise life is, that 
the maker of the money should also be the 
spender of it, and spend it, approximately, all, 
before he dies ; so that his true ambition as an 
economist should be, to die, not as rich, but as 
poor, as possible,* calculating the ebb tide of 
possession in true and calm proportion to the 
ebb tide of life. Which law, checking the wing 

[* See the Lt/e of Fenelon. "The labouring peasantry 
were at all times the objects of his tenderest care ; his palace 
at Cambray, with all his books and writings, being consumed 
by fire, he bore the misfortune with unruffled calmness, and 
said it was better his palace should be burnt than the cottage 
of a poor peasant." (These thoroughly good men always 
go too far, and lose their power over the mass.) He died 
exemplifying the mean he had always observed between 
prodigality and avarice, leaving neither debts nor money.] 



196 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

of accumulative desire in the mid-volley,* and 
leading to peace of possession and fulness of 
fruition in old age, is also wholesome in that 
by the freedom of gift, together with present 
help and counsel, it at once endears and 
dignifies age in the sight of youth, which then 
no longer strips the bodies of the dead, but 
receives the grace of the living. Its chief use 
would (or will be, for men are indeed capable 
of attaining to this much use of their reason), 
that some temperance and measure will be 
put to the acquisitiveness of commerce, f For 
as things stand, a man holds it his duty to be 
temperate in his food, and of his body, but 

* /cat Trepiau rjyovf^evovs elvat fxr} to t7]v ovaiav eXdrrw 
TTOieip dWcL TO tt]v d7r\7]<TTiav TrXei'w. " And thinking 
(wisely) that poverty consists not in making one's possessions 
less, but one's avarice more." — Laws, v. 8. Read the 
context, and compare. " He who spends for all that is 
noble, and gains by nothing but what is just, will hardly be 
notably wealthy, or distressfully poor." — Laws, v, 42. 

t The fury of modern trade arises chiefly out of the 
possibility of making ,sudden fortunes by largeness of trans- 
action, and accident of discovery or contrivance. I have no 
doubt that the final interest of every nation is to check the 
action of these commercial lotteries ; and that all great acci- 
dental gains or losses should be national, — not individual. 
But speculation absolute, unconnected with commercial 
effort, is an unmitigated evil in a state, and the root of 
countless evils beside. 



VI. — MASTERSHIP. 197 

for no duty to be temperate in his riches, and 
of his mind. He sees that he ought not to 
waste his youth and his flesh for luxury ; but 
he will waste his age, and his soul, for 
money, and think he does no wrong, nor 
know the delirium tremens of the intellect 
for disease. But the law of life is, that a 
man should fix the sum he desires to make 
annually, as the food he desires to eat daily ; 
and stay when he has reached the limit, re- 
fusing increase of business, and leaving it to 
others, so obtaining due freedom of time for 
better thoughts.* How the gluttony of busi- 
ness is punished, a bill of health for the princi- 
pals of the richest city houses, issued annually, 
would show in a sufficiently impressive manner. 
154. I know, of course, that these statements 
will be received by the modern - merchant as 
an active border rider of the sixteenth century 
would have heard of its being proper for men 
of the Marches to get their living by the spade, 
instead of the spur. But my business is only 
to state veracities and necessities; I neither 
look for the acceptance of the one, nor hope 

[* I desire in the strongest terms to reinforce all that is 
contained in this paragraph ] 



I9S MUNERA PULVERIS. 

for the nearness of the other. Near or distant, 
the day will assuredly come when the mer- 
chants of a state shall be its true ministers of 
exchange, its porters, in the double sense of 
carriers and gate-keepers, bringing all lands 
into frank and faithful communication, and 
knowing for their master of guild, Hermes the 
herald, instead of Mercury the gain-guarder. 

155. And now, finally, for immediate rule 
to all who will accept it. 

The distress of any population means that 
they need food, house-room, clothes, and fuel. 
You can never, therefore, be wrong in employ- 
ing any labourer to produce food, house-room, 
clothes, or fuel ; but you are always wrong if 
you employ him to produce nothing, (for then 
some other labourer must be worked double 
time to feed him); and you are generally 
wrong, at present, if you employ him (unless 
he can do nothing else) to produce works of 
art or luxuries ; because modern art is mostly 
on a false basis, and .modern luxury is 
criminally great. "^ 

* It is especially necessary that the reader should keep 
his mind fixed on the methods of consumption and de- 
struction, as the true sources of national poverty. Men are 



VI. — MASTERSHIP. I 99 

156. The way to produce more food is 
mainly to bring in fresh ground, and increase 
faciHties of carriage ; — to break rock, exchange 
earth, drain the moist, and water the dry, 
to mend roads, and build harbours of refuge. 
Taxation thus spent will annihilate taxation, 
but spent in war, it annihilates revenue, 

apt to call every exchange "expenditure," but it is only 
consumption which is expenditure. A large number of the 
purchases made by the richer classes are mere forms of 
interchange of unused property, wholly without effect on 
national prosperity. It matters nothing to the state whether, 
if a china pipkin be rated as worth a hundred pounds, A has 
the pipkin and B the pounds, or A the pounds and B the 
pipkin. But if the pipkin is pretty, and A or B breaks it, 
there is national loss, not otherwise. So again, when the 
loss has really taken place, no shifting of the shoulders that 
bear it will do away with the reahty of it. There is an 
intensely ludicrous notion in the public mind respecting the 
abolishment of debt by denying it. When a debt is denied, 
the lender loses instead of the borrower, that is all ; the 
loss is precisely, accurately, everlastingly the same. The 
Americans borrow money to spend in blowing up their own 
houses. They deny their debt, by one third already [1863], 
gold being at fifty premium ; and they will probably deny 
it wholly. That merely means that the holders of the notes 
are to be the losers instead of the issuers. The quantity of 
loss is precisely equal, and irrevocable ; it is the quantity of 
human industry spent in effecting the explosion, plus the 
quantity of goods exploded. Honour only decides who shall 
pay the sum lost, not whether it is to be paid or not. 
Paid it must be, and to the uttermost farthing. 



M.'J 



200 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

157. The way to produce house-room is 
to apply your force first " to the humblest 
dwellings. When your bricklayers are out 
of employ, do not build splendid new streets, 
but better the old ones; send your paviours 
and slaters to the poorest villages, and see 
that your poor are healthily lodged, before you 
try your hand on stately architecture. You 
will find its stateliness rise better under the 
trowel afterwards; and we do not yet build 
so well that we need hasten to display our 
skill to future ages. Had the labour which 
has decorated the Houses of Parliament filled, 
instead, rents in walls and roofs throughout 
the county of Middlesex; and our deputies 
met to talk within massive walls that would 
have needed no stucco for five hundred 
years, — the decoration might have been better 
afterwards, and the talk now. And touching 
even our highly conscientious church build- 
ing, it may be well to remember that in the 
best days of church plans, their masons 
called themselves 'Hogeurs du bon Dieu;" 
and that since, according to the most trusted 
reports, God spends a good deal of His time 
in cottages as well as in churches. He might 



VI. MASTERSHIP. 20I 

perhaps like to be. a little better lodged there 
also. 

158. The way to get more clothes is — not, 
necessarily, to get more cotton. There were 
words ~ written twenty years ago * which 
would have saved many of us some shivering, 
had they been minded in time. Shall we read 
them again ? 

"The Continental people, it would seem, 
are importing our machiner}^, beginning to 
spin cotton, and manufacture for themselves ; 
to cut us out of this market, and then out 
of that ! Sad news, indeed ; but irremediable. 
By no means the saddest news — the saddest 
news, is that we should find our national 
existence, as I sometimes hear it said, depend 
on selling manufactured cotton at a farthing 
an ell cheaper than any other people. A most 
narrow stand for a great nation to base itself 
on ! A stand which, with all the Corn-Law 
abrogations conceivable, I do not think will 
be capable of enduring. 

[* {Past and Present, Chap. IX. of Third Section.) To 
think that for these twenty— now twenty-six — years, this one 
voice of Carlyle's has been the only faithful and useful 
utterance in all England, and has sounded through all these 
years in vain ! See Fors Clavigera, Letter X.] 



202 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

^' My friends, suppose we quitted that 
stand ; suppose we came honestly down from 
it and said — ' This is our minimum of cotton 
prices ; we care not, for the present, to make 
cotton any cheaper. Do you, if it seem so 
blessed to you, make cotton cheaper. Fill 
your lungs with cotton fur, your heart with 
copperas fumes, with rage and mutiny ; be- 
come ye the general gnomes of Europe, slaves 
of the lamp ! ' I admire a nation which fancies 
it will die if it do not undersell all other 
nations to the end of the world. Brothers, we 
will cease to undersell them; we will be con- 
tent to equal-sell them ; to be happy selling 
equally with them ! I . do, not see the use of 
underselling them : cotton-cloth is already 
twopence a yard, or lower ; and yet bare 
backs were never more numerous among us. 
Let inventive men cease to spend their exist- 
ence incessantly contriving how cotton can 
be made cheaper; and try to invent a little 
how cotton at its present cheapness could be 
somewhat justlier divided among us. 

" Let inventive men consider — whether the 
secret of this universe does after all consist in 
making money. With a hell which means — 



VI. — MASTERSHIP. 203 

^ failing to make money/ I do not think there 
is any heaven possible that would suit one 
well. In brief, all this Mammon gospel of 
supply-and-demand, competition, laissez faire, 
and devil take the hindmost" (foremost, is it 
not, rather, Mr. Carlyle ?), '^ begins to be one 
of the shabbiest gospels ever preached." 

159. The way to produce more fuel * is first 
to make your coal mines safer, by sinking 
more shafts ; then set all your convicts to 
work in them, and if, as is to be hoped, you 
succeed in diminishing the supply of that sort 
of labourer, consider what means there may be, 
first, of growing forest where its growth will 
improve climate; secondly, of splintering the 
forests which now make continents of fruitful 
land pathless and poisonous, into faggots 
for fire ; — so gaining at once dominion ice- 
wards and sunwards. Your steam power has 
been given (you will find eventually) for work 
such as that : and not for excursion trains, to 
give the labourer a moment's breath, at the 
peril of his breath for ever, from amidst the 

[* We don't want to produce more fuel just now, but much 
less ; and to use what we get for cooking and warming our- 
selves, instead of for running from place to place.] 



204 MUNERA PULVERIS. 

cities which it has crushed into masses of 
corruption. When you know how to build 
cities, and how to rule them, you will be able 
to breathe in their streets, and the " excur- 
sion " will be the afternoon's walk or game 
in the fields round them. 

1 60. '^ But nothing of this work will pay ? " 
No ; no more than it pays to dust your 
rooms, or wash your doorsteps. It will pay ; 
not at . first in currency, but in that which is 
the end and the source of currency, — in life ; 
(and in currency richly afterwards). It will 
pay in that which is more than life, — in light, 
whose true price has not yet been reckoned in 
any currency, and yet into the image of which, 
all wealth, one way or other, must be cast. 
For your riches must either be as the light- 
ning, which. 

Begot but in a cloud, 
Though shining bright, and speaking loud, 
Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race ; 
And, where it gilds, it wounds the place ; — 

or else, as the lightning of the sacred sign, 
which shines from one part of the heaven to 
the other. There is no other choice; you 
must either take dust for deity, spectre for 



VI. MASTERSHIP.- 20$ 

possession, fettered dream for life, and for 
epitaph, this reversed verse of the great 
Hebrew hymn of economy (Psalm cxii.) : — 
'' He hath gathered together, he hath stripped 
the poor, his iniquity remaineth for ever : " — or 
else, having the sun of justice to shine on you, 
and the sincere substance of good in your 
possession, and the pure law and liberty ol 
life within you, leave men to write this better 
legend over your grave : — 

''He hath dispersed abroad. He hath 
given to the poor. His righteousness re- 
maineth for ever." 



APPENDICES. 



[I HAVE brought together in these last pages 
a few notes, which were not properly to be 
incorporated with the text, and which, at the 
bottom of pages, checked the reader's attention 
to the main argument. They contain, how- 
ever, several statements to which I wish to 
be able to refer, or have already referred, in 
other of my books, so that I think right to 
preserve them.] 



APPENDIX L— (p. 7.) 

The greatest of all economists are those most 
opposed to the doctrine of "laissez faire," namely, 
the fortifying virtues, which the wisest men of all 
time have arranged under the general heads of 
Prudence, or Discretion (the spirit which discerns 
and adopts rightly) ; Justice (the spirit which rules 



208 APPENDICES. 

and divides rightly) ; Fortitude (the spirit which 
persists and endures rightly) ; and Temperance 
(the spirit which stops and refuses rightly). These 
cardinal and sentinel virtues are not only the 
means of protecting and prolonging life itself, but 
they are the chief guards, or sources, of the mate- 
rial means of life, and the governing powers and 
princes of economy. Thus, precisely according to 
the number of just men in a nation, is their power 
of avoiding either intestine or foreign war. All 
disputes may be peaceably settled, if a sufficient 
number of persons have been trained to submit to 
the principles of justice, while the necessity for war 
is in direct ratio to the number of unjust persons 
who are incapable of determining a quarrel but by 
violence. Whether the injustice take the form of 
the desire of dominion, or of refusal to submit to 
it, or of lust of territory, or lust of money, or of 
mere irregular passion and wanton will, the result 
is economically the same ; — loss of the quantity of 
power and life consumed in repressing the in- 
justice added to the material and moral destruc- 
tion caused by the fact of war. The early civil 
wars of England, and the existing * war in America, 
are curious examples — these under monarchical, 
this under republican, institutions — of the results 

[* Written in 1862. I little thought that when I next 

corrected my type, the "existing" war best illustrative of 

the sentence, would be between Frenchmen in the Elysian 
Fields of Paris. 1 



APPENDICES. 209 

on large masses of nations of the want of educa- 
tion in principles of justice. But the mere dread 
of distrust resulting from the want of the inner 
virtues of Faith and Charity prove often no less 
costly than war itself. The fear which France and 
England have of each other costs each nation 
about fifteen millions sterling annually, besides 
various paralyses of commerce; that sum being 
spent in the manufacture of means of destruction 
instead of means of production. There is no more 
reason in the nature of things that France and 
England should be hostile to each other than that 
England and Scotland should be, or Lancashire 
and Yorkshire; and the reciprocal terrors of the 
opposite sides of the EngHsh Channel are neither 
more necessary, more economical, nor more 
virtuous, than the old riding and reiving on the 
opposite flanks of the Cheviots, or than England's 
own weaving for herself of crowns of thorn, from 
the stems of her Red and White Roses. 



APPENDIX II.— (p. 30.) 

Few passages of the book which at least some part 
of the nations at present most advanced in civi- 
lisation accept as an expression of final truth, 
have been more distorted than those bearing on 
Idolatry. For the idolatry there denounced is 



2 I O APPENDICES. 

neither sculpture, nor veneration of sculpture. It 
is simply the substitution of an " Eidolon," phan- 
tasm, or imagination of Good, for that which is real 
and enduring; from the Highest Living Good, 
which gives life, to the lowest material good which 
ministers to it. The Creator, and the things 
created, which He is said to have "seen good" 
in creating, are in this their eternal goodness 'ap- 
pointed always to be "worshipped," — i.e., to have 
goodness and worth ascribed to them from the 
heart ; and the sweep and range of idolatry extend 
to the rejection of any or all of these, " calling evil 
good, and good evil, — putting bitter for sweet, and 
sweet for bitter." ^ For in that rejection and sub- 
stitution we betray the first of all Loyalties, to the 
fixed Law of life, and with resolute opposite loyalty 
serve our own imagination of good, which is the 
law, not of the House, but of the Grave (otherwise 
called the law of " mark missing," which we trans- 
late "law of Sin"); these "two masters," between 
whose services we have to choose, being other- 
wise distinguished as God and Mammon, which 
Mammon, though we narrowly take it as the power 
of money only, is in truth the great evil Spirit of 
false and fond desire, or " Covetousness, which 
is Idolatry." So that Iconoclasm — /;;z<3:^^-breaking 
— is easy ; but an Idol cannot be broken — it must 

"'^ Compare the close of the Fourth Lecture in Aratra 
Pentelici. 



APPENDICES. 211 

be forsaken ; and this is not so easy, either to do, 
or persuade to doing. For men may readily be 
convinced of the weakness of an image ; but not 
of the emptiness of an imagination. 



APPENDIX III.— (p. 34.) 

I HAVE not attempted to support, by the authority 
of other writers, any of the statements made in 
these papers; indeed, if such authorities were 
rightly collected, there would be no occasion for 
my writing at all. Even in the scattered passages 
referring to this subject in three books of Carlyle's 
. — Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and the 
Latter Day Pamphlets,^all has been said that 
needs to be said, and far better than I shall ever 
say it again. But the habit of the pubHc mind 
at present is to require everything to be uttered 
diffusely, loudly, and a hundred times over, before 
it will listen; and it has revolted against these 
papers of mine as if they contained things daring 
and new, when there is not one assertion in them 
of which the truth has not been for ages known to 
the wisest, and proclaimed by the most eloquent of 
men. It would be [I had written will be; but 
have now reached a time of life for which there 
is but one mood — the conditional,] a far greater 
pleasure to me hereafter, to collect their words 



2 12 APPENDICES. 

than to add to mine : Horace's clear rendering of 
the substance of the passages in the text may be 
found room for at once, 

Si quis emat citharas, emptas comportet in unum 
Nee studio citharae, nee Musae deditus ulli ; 
Si sealpra et formas non sutor, nautica vela 
Aversus mercaturis, delirus et amens 
Undique dicatur merito. Qui discrepat istis 
Qui nummos aurumque recondit, nescius uli 
Compositis ; metuensque velut contingere sacrum ? 

[Which may be roughly thus translated : — 
" Were anybody to buy fiddles, and collect a 
number, being in no wise given to fiddling, nor 
fond of music : or if, being no cobbler, he collected 
awls and lasts, or, having no mind for sea-adven- 
ture, bought sails, every one would call him a 
madman, and deservedly. But what difference is 
there between such a man and one who lays by 
coins and gold, and does not know how to use, 
when he has got them ? "] 

With which it is perhaps desirable also to give 
Xenophon's statement, it being clearer than any 
English one can be, owing to the power of the 
general Greek term for wealth, " useable things." 

[I have cut out the Greek because I can't be 
troubled to correct the accents, and am always 
nervous about them ; here it is in English, as well 
as I can do it : — 

"This being so, it follows that things are only 



APPENDICES. 213 

property to the man who knows how to use them ; 
as flutes, for instance, are property to the man who 
can pipe upon them respectably; but to one who 
knows not how to pipe, they are no property, 
unless he can get rid of them advantageously. . . . 
For if they are not sold, the flutes are no property 
(being serviceable for nothing) ; but, sold, they be- 
come property. To which Socrates made answer, 
— 'and only then if he knows how to sell them, 
for if he sell them to another man who cannot 
play on them, still they are no property. ' "] 



APPENDIX IV.— (p. 38.) 

The reader is to include here in the idea of 
"Government," any branch of the Executive, or 
even any body of private persons, entrusted with 
the practical management of public interests un- 
connected directly with their own personal ones. 
In theoretical discussions of legislative interference 
with political economy, it is usually, and of course 
unnecessarily, assumed that Government must be 
always of that form and force in which we have 
been accustomed to see it; — that its abuses can 
never be less, nor its wisdom greater, nor its 
powers more numerous. But, practically, the custom 
in most civilized countries is, for every man to de- 
precate the interference of Government as long as 



2 I 4 APPENDICES. 

things tell for his personal advantage, and to call 
for it when they cease to do so. The request of the 
Manchester Economists to be supplied with cotton 
by Government (the system of supply and demand 
having, for the time, fallen sorrowfully short of the 
expectations of scientific persons from it), is an 
interesting case in point. It were to be wished 
that less wide and bitter suffering, suffering, . too, 
of the innocent, had been needed to force the 
nation, or some part of it, to ask itself why a 
body of men, already confessedly, capable of 
managing matters both military and divine, should 
not be permitted, or even requested, at need, to 
provide in some wise for sustenance as well as for 
defence; and secure, if it might be, — (and it 
might, I think, even the rather be), — purity of 
bodily, as well as of spiritual, aliment? Why, 
having made many roads for the passage of armies, 
may they not make a few for the conveyance of 
food; and after organising, with applause, various 
schemes of theological instruction for the PubHc, 
organise, moreover, some methods of bodily 
nourishment for them ? Or is the soul so much 
less trustworthy in its instincts than the stomach, 
that legislation is necessary for the one, but in- 
applicable to the other? 



APPENDICES. 215 



APPENDIX v.— (p. 104.) 

I DEBATED with myself whether to make the note 
on Homer longer by examining the typical meaning 
of the shipwreck of Ulysses, and his escape from 
Charybdis by help of her figtree ; but as I should 
have had to go on to the lovely myth of Leu- 
cothea's veil, and did not care to spoil this by a 
hurried account of it, I left it for future examina- 
tion j and, three days after the paper was published, 
observed that the reviewers, with their customary 
helpfulness, were endeavouring to throw the whole 
subject back into confusion by dwelling on the 
single (as they imagined) oversight. I omitted 
also a note on the sense of the word Xvypdv^ with 
respect to the pharmacy of Circe, and herb-fields 
of Helen (compare its use in Odyssey, xvii., 473, 
etc.), which would farther have illustrated the 
nature of the Circean power. But, not to be led 
too far into the subtleties of these myths, observe 
respecting them all, that even in very simple 
parables, it is not always easy to attach indisputable 
meaning to every part of them. I recollect some 
years ago, throwing an assembly of learned persons 
who had met to delight themselves with interpreta- 
tions of the parable of the prodigal son, (interpre- 
tations which had up to that moment gone very 
smoothly), into mute indignation, by inadvertently 
asking who the ?/;^prodigal son was, and what was 



2 I 6 APPENDICES. 

to be learned by his example. The leading divine 
of the company, Mr. Molyneux, at last explained 
-to me that the unprodigal son was a lay figure, put 
in for dramatic effect, to make the story prettier, 
and that no note was to be taken of him. Without, 
however, admitting that Homer put in the last 
escape of Ulysses merely to make his story prettier, 
this is nevertheless true of all Greek myths, that 
they have many opposite lights and shades ; they 
are as changeful as opal, and like opal, usually 
have one colour by reflected, and another by 
transmitted light. But they are true jewels for 
all that, and full of noble enchantment for those 
who can use them ; for those who cannot, I am 
content to repeat the words I wrote four years ago, 
in the appendix to the Tivo Paths — 

"The entire purpose of a great thinker may be 
difficult to fathom, and we may be over and over 
again more or less mistaken in guessing at his 
meaning; but the real, profound, nay, quite 
bottomless and unredeemable mistake, is the fool's 
thought, that he had no meaning." 



APPENDIX VI.— (p. 12 1.) 

The derivation of words is like that of rivers; 
there is one real source, usually small, unlikely, 
and difficult to fi.nd, far up among the hills ; then, 



APPENDICES. 217 

as the word flows on and comes into service, it 
takes in the force of other words from other 
sources, and becomes quite another word— often 
much more than one word, after the junction — a 
word as it were of many waters, sometimes both 
sweet -and bitter.- Thus the whole force of our 
English "charity" depends on the guttural in 
"charis" getting confused with the c of the Latin 
" carus ; " thenceforward throughout the middle 
ages, the two ideas ran, on together, and both 
got confused with St. Paul's a/aV^j, which ex- 
presses a different idea in all sorts of ways ; our 
"charity" having not. only brought in the entirely 
foreign sense of almsgiving, but lost- the essential' 
sense of contentment, and lost much more in 
getting too far away from the " charis " of the final 
gospel benedictions. For truly it is fine: Christi- 
anity we have come to, which, professing to expect 
the perpetual grace or charity of its Founder, 
has not itself grace or charity enough to hinder 
it- froin overreaching its friends in sixpenny 
bargains; and which, supplicating evening and 
morning the forgiveness of its own debts, goes 
forth at noon to take its fellow-servants by the 
throat, saying, — not merely "Pay me that thou 
owest," but "Pay me that thou owest me noty 

It is -true that we sometimes wear Ophelia's rue 
with" a difference, and call it " Herb o' grace o' 
Sundays," taking consolation out of the offertory 
with — " Look, what he layeth out, it shall be paid 

o* 



2 I 8 APPENDICES. 

him again." Comfortable words indeed, and good 
to set against the old royalty of Largesse — 

Whose nioste joie was, I wis, 

When that she gave, and said, " Have this." 

[I am glad to end, for this time, with these 
lovely words of Chaucer. We have heard only 
too much lately of " Indiscriminate charity," with 
implied reproval, not of the Indiscrimination 
merely, but of the Charity also. We have partly 
succeeded in enforcing on the minds of the poor 
the idea that it is disgraceful to receive ; and are 
likely, without much difficulty, to succeed in per- 
suading not a few of the rich that it is disgraceful 
to give. But the political economy of a great 
state makes both giving and receiving graceful ; 
and the political economy of true religion inter- 
prets the saying that "it is more blessed to give 
than to receive," not as the promise of reward in 
another life for mortified selfishness in this, but 
as pledge of bestowal upon us of that sweet 
and better nature, which does not mortify itself 
in giving.] 

Brantwood, Coniston, 
^tk October, 1871. 



5 PR 2 6 1904 



